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Design and Synthesis of Atomically Precise Nanoporous Graphenes
Abstract
Nanoporous graphenes (NPGs) are an emerging class of materials that are promising for a great variety of applications ranging from electronic logic devices and gas sensing to molecular sieving, ion transport, and DNA sequencing. Theoretical and experimental studies showed that unlike graphene with its well-established semimetallic behavior, NPGs possess highly tunable electronic, magnetic, quantum, and mechanical properties that strongly depend on the structural parameters, such as porosity, periodicity of nanopores, pore diameter, and neck width. However, the practical realization of these exciting properties requires the synthesis of NPGs with atomic precision, which is beyond the structural resolution of the current top-down fabrication approaches.Chapter 1 comprehensively reviews the bottom-up approaches for the synthesis of NPGs with well-controlled electronic properties. The chapter covers the existing designs, synthetic approaches and challenges, recent breakthroughs, and future opportunities for NPGs. Although recent synthetic advances show promising success, the synthesis of NPGs with atomic precision remains challenging. One of the current challenges for the NPG research is the lack of a modular precursor design to produce atomically precise nanoporous graphene materials with tunable electronic and mechanical properties. Therefore, the research described in this dissertation had a strong emphasis on the modular design and synthesis of atomically precise nanoporous graphene materials.Chapter 2 describes the modular design of molecular precursors that produce atomically precise nanoporous graphene materials with different dimensionalities, either zero-dimensional porous nanographenes or one-dimensional porous graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), depending on the reaction conditions.Chapter 3 describes the modular synthesis of a new family of atomically precise GNRs containing functional endcaps and tunable edge patterns. It is demonstrated that NPGs can be produced either through heteroatom doping of these GNRs, which triggers their lateral self-assembly into extended two-dimensional structures or via lateral dehydrogenative cyclodehydrogenation of on-surface synthesized GNRs.Finally, Chapter 4 summarizes the results of this study and describes possible future directions for this project.
Subject Area
Materials science|Nanoscience|Nanotechnology
Recommended Citation
Sarker, Mamun, "Design and Synthesis of Atomically Precise Nanoporous Graphenes" (2022). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI29168473.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI29168473