Journal
NATURE NANOTECHNOLOGY
Volume 10, Issue 2, Pages 156-160Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/NNANO.2014.307
Keywords
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Funding
- Office of Naval Research BRC Program (molecular synthesis and characterization)
- Office of Science
- Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the US Department of Energy under the Nanomachine Program at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory [DE-AC02-05CH11231]
- National Science Foundation (NSF) [DMR-1206512, DMR10-1006184]
- Simons Foundation Fellowship in Theoretical Physics
- German Research Foundation (DFG) [Ha 6946/1-1]
- Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien
- Division Of Materials Research [1206512] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Bandgap engineering is used to create semiconductor hetero-structure devices that perform processes such as resonant tunnelling(1,2) and solar energy conversion(3,4). However, the performance of such devices degrades as their size is reduced(5,6). Graphene-based molecular electronics has emerged as a candidate to enable high performance down to the single-molecule scale(7-17). Graphene nanoribbons, for example, can have widths of less than 2 nm and bandgaps that are tunable via their width and symmetry(6,18,19). It has been predicted that bandgap engineering within a single graphene nanoribbon may be achieved by varying the width of covalently bonded segments within the nanoribbon(20-22). Here, we demonstrate the bottom-up synthesis of such width-modulated armchair graphene nanoribbon heterostructures, obtained by fusing segments made from two different molecular building blocks. We study these heterojunctions at subnanometre length scales with scanning tunnelling microscopy and spectroscopy, and identify their spatially modulated electronic structure, demonstrating molecular-scale bandgap engineering, including type I heterojunction behaviour. First-principles calculations support these findings and provide insight into the microscopic electronic structure of bandgap-engineered graphene nanoribbon heterojunctions.
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