On-surface synthesis of nanoporous graphene

Resumen del trabajo presentado al International workshop On-Surface Synthesis (OSS), celebrado en Sant Feliu de Guíxol (España) del 23 al 28 de septiembre de 2018.Nanosize pores can turn semimetallic graphene into a semiconductor and from being impermeable into the most efficient molecular sieve membrane. However, scaling the pores down to the nanometer, while fulfilling the tight structural constraints imposed by applications, represents an enormous challenge for present top-down strategies. Here we report a bottom-up method to synthesize nanoporous graphene comprising an ordered array of pores separated by ribbons, which can be tuned down to the one nanometer range. The size, density, morphology and chemical composition of the pores are defined with atomic precision by the design of the molecular precursors. Our DFT-STS study further reveal a highly anisotropic electronic structure, where orthogonal one-dimensional electronic bands with an energy gap of ~1 eV coexist with confined pore states that can be regarded as 2D analogues of the superatom states found in fullerene. The combined structural and electrical properties makes this nanoporous 2D material a highly versatile semiconductor for simultaneous sieving and electrical sensing of molecular species.Peer reviewe