First-principles study on bottom-up fabrication process of atomically precise graphene nanoribbons

Abstract

We investigate the energetics of a polyanthracene formation in the bottom-up fabrication of atomically precise graphene nanoribbons on Au(111) using first-principles calculations based on the density functional theory. We show that the structure of precursor molecules plays a decisive role in the C–C coupling reaction. The reaction energy of the dimerization of anthracene dimers is a larger negative value than that of the dimerization of anthracene monomers, suggesting that the precursor molecule used in experiments has a favorable structure for graphene nanoribbon fabrication.