Abstract:

On-surface reactions, via programmed interactions of molecular building blocks, has recently emerged as a promising route to synthesise atomically precise materials from the ‘bottom-up’. This approach ensures exquisite atomic-scale control of the structural and chemical functionalization, allowing to design a vast number of carbon-based nanoarchitectures not available by traditional solution chemistry nor with the ‘top-down’ methodologies. In particular, graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) with different structures can be synthesized with atomic precision and fine-tuned electronic band gap.

In this talk, I will describe the recent advances in the on-surface synthesis field. Then, I will discuss our recent results to synthetize atomically precise nanoporous graphene, graphene nanoribbons and their chemical functionalization and how to organize them into superlattices. At the end of the day, this talk will demonstrate the full path to synthetize a semiconducting graphene material with a bandgap similar to that of silicon, its atomic-scale characterization, and its implementation in an electronic device. Further potential applications include in photonics and highly selective molecular filtration and sensing systems.

Short Bio:

César Moreno received his degree in Fundamental Physics at the University of Cantabria in 2005 and was an internship student at the Atomic Research Council in Grenoble. He earned his Ph.D in Material Science at the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB) in 2010 and he moved as postdoctoral researcher at the Nano-engineering research center at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (CRNE-UPC).

After two years, he was awarded with a tenure track position at the National Institute of Materials Science (NIMS) in Tsukuba, and he was also promoted as permanent researcher. After nearly 3 years living in Japan, he then moved back to Barcelona under a Marie Curie fellowship at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), where he presently works as a senior postdoctoral researcher. There, his work focuses in the atomically precise manufacturing of low-dimensional organic materials with potential applications in nanoelectronics, sensors and advanced filtration.

Hosted by Mariona Coll and Carmen Ocal