Optical Imaging and Spectroscopy of Atomically Precise Armchair Graphene Nanoribbons

Sihan Zhao; Gabriela Borin Barin; Ting Cao; Jan Overbeck; Rimah Darawish; Tairu Lyu; Steve Drapcho; Sheng Wang; Tim Dumslaff; Akimitsu Narita; Michel Calame; Klaus Müllen; Steven G Louie; Pascal Ruffieux; Roman Fasel; Feng Wang

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b04497

Optical Imaging and Spectroscopy of Atomically Precise Armchair Graphene Nanoribbons

Nano Lett. 2020 Feb 12;20(2):1124-1130. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b04497. Epub 2020 Jan 15.

Authors

Sihan Zhao¹, Gabriela Borin Barin², Ting Cao^{1

3}, Jan Overbeck², Rimah Darawish², Tairu Lyu¹, Steve Drapcho¹, Sheng Wang^{1

4}, Tim Dumslaff⁵, Akimitsu Narita⁵, Michel Calame², Klaus Müllen^{5

6}, Steven G Louie^{1

4}, Pascal Ruffieux², Roman Fasel^{2

7}, Feng Wang^{1

4

8}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics , University of California at Berkeley , Berkeley , California 94720 , United States.
² Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology , 8600 Dübendorf , Switzerland.
³ Department of Materials Science and Engineering , University of Washington , Seattle , Washington United States.
⁴ Materials Science Division , Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , Berkeley , California 94720 , United States.
⁵ Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research , Ackermannweg 10 , D-55128 Mainz , Germany.
⁶ Institute of Physical Chemistry , Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz , 5128 Mainz , Germany.
⁷ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry , University of Bern , Freiestrasse 3 , CH-3012 Bern , Switzerland.
⁸ Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute , University of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , Berkeley , California 94720 , United States.

PMID: 31916444
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b04497

Abstract

We report the optical imaging and absorption spectroscopy on atomically precise armchair graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) on insulating fused silica substrates. This is achieved by controlling light polarization on macroscopically aligned GNRs which greatly enhances the optical contrast of the submonolayer GNRs on the insulating substrates. We measure the linear absorption spectra of 7-armchair and 9-armchair GNRs in this study, and the experimental data agree qualitatively with ab inito calculation results. The polarization spectroscopy technique enables an unambiguous optical identification of GNRs and provides a rapid tool to characterize the transferred film over a large area.

Keywords: absorption spectroscopy; armchair graphene nanoribbons; graphene nanoribbons; optical imaging; optical properties; polarization spectroscopy.