Unraveling the Electronic Structure of Narrow Atomically Precise Chiral Graphene Nanoribbons

Abstract

Recent advances in graphene-nanoribbon-based research have demonstrated the controlled synthesis of chiral graphene nanoribbons (chGNRs) with atomic precision using strategies of on-surface chemistry. However, their electronic characterization, including typical figures of merit like band gap or frontier band's effective mass, has not yet been reported. We provide a detailed characterization of (3,1)-chGNRs on Au(111). The structure and epitaxy, as well as the electronic band structure of the ribbons, are analyzed by means of scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy, angle-resolved photoemission, and density functional theory.