Investigation of Two-Dimensional h-BCN Semiconductors
Final Report Abstract
The goal of this project was to perform fundamental research on a recently discovered, novel 2D semiconductor h-BCN. The project was supported by recent and promising results from scanning tunneling microscopy and photoelectron spectroscopy from the applicant and his collaborators. It was expected that the discovered h-BNC has considerable potential for application in electronic devices, owing to its unique structural properties and notably due to its electronic band gap. Measurements using equipment available at the PEARL beamline at the Swiss Light Source during the early phase of this project unexpectedly showed decay of the precursors used during thermal desorption so that other, thermally more stable structural phases than the expected h-BCN could form simultaneously during the attempted h-BCN synthesis and coexistet, including graphene and h-BN. Areas of structural intact h-BCN were very small, not suitable for the planned experiments. For these reasons we deviated from the original plans and instead developed an alternative and affordable technique, electrospray deposition, which was expected to be more suitable for the deposition of fragile, thermally unstable, solution-synthesized on basically any substrate surface. A signature feature of the setup was the combination of an ultrahigh vacuum system that comprises surface science analytical tools with a glovebox that holds the electrospray setup. Using this setup, products from solution-based chemistry could now consequently be integrated in surface-scientific synthesis and analysis approaches. Significant results from this study include (i) the synthesis of graphene nanoribbons including hetero nanoribbons upon electrospray deposition of precursor molecules, molecule mixes and large polymer chains from solution; (ii) the electrospray deposition of various spin crossover complexes and the study of their selfassembly on surfaces; (iii) the first ever reported fabrication of surface-supported sub-nanostructures from molecules of the organic semiconductor Y6. The considerable advantage of this new approach is that new substances, which can only be fabricated in solution, are now accessible to surface scientific strategies for on-surface nanostructure synthesis and characterization. The electrospray deposition, while being used here for basic research, is easily scalable to industrial needs, opening up new avenues for research transfer into potential applications.
Publications
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Structure Formation and Coupling Reactions of Hexaphenylbenzene and Its Brominated Analog. ChemPhysChem, 22(17), 1769-1773.
Teeter, Jacob D.; Costa, Paulo S.; Dobner, Christoph; Sarker, Mamun; Sinitskii, Alexander & Enders, Axel
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Diffusion-controlled on-surface synthesis of graphene nanoribbon heterojunctions. RSC Advances, 12(11), 6615-6618.
Dobner, Christoph; Li, Gang; Sarker, Mamun; Sinitskii, Alexander & Enders, Axel
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On-surface GNR fabrication via electrosrpray deposition of monomers and polymers from solution. DPG- Tagung Regensburg, 2022
F. Baier, C. Dobner, M. Beckstein, M. Sarker, A. Sinitski & A. Enders
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Two Great Projects on Surface-Supportd Graphene Nanoribbons. Poste, Symposium on Surface Science, St. Christoph/Arlberg, Austria, 2022
A. Enders, C. Dobne, F. Baier, M. Beckstein, M. Sarker & A. Sinitskii
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On-surface GNR fabrication via electrospray deposition of monomers and polymers from solution. MS+M Frontiers in Native Mass Spectrometry & Single Molecule Imaging Conference, Oxford, 2023
F. Baier, M. Sarker, C. Dobner, A. Sinitskii & A. Enders
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Elektrospray-Deposition und rastertunnelmikroskopische Untersuchung unter Ultrahochvakuum von in Lösung synthetisierten Molekülen. Dissertation, Universität Bayreuth
Felix Baier
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Porous Nanographenes, Graphene Nanoribbons, and Nanoporous Graphene Selectively Synthesized from the Same Molecular Precursor. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 146(21), 14453-14467.
Sarker, Mamun; Dobner, Christoph; Zahl, Percy; Fiankor, Christian; Zhang, Jian; Saxena, Anshul; Aluru, Narayana; Enders, Axel & Sinitskii, Alexander
