Description

The discovery of novel 2D materials with unique electronic band structures has generated significant interest in understanding how modifications in their morphology and elemental composition can influence their physical properties. A major objective in this field has been to develop alternatives to conventional top-down fabrication methods of tailored graphene-based structures, which originally exhibit semimetallic electronic properties. In this context, bottom-up approaches based on on-surface reactions of molecular precursors (e.g., via Ullmann coupling and cyclodehydrogenation) have proven to be highly efficient for the growth of nanostructured one- and two-dimensional graphenic architectures on metal surfaces with tunable electronic properties, ranging from semimetallic to semiconducting behavior. By the same time, advances in solution-phase molecular chemistry also made possible the synthesis of extended 2D conjugated networks.

Building on these advances, the proposed PhD project will focus on the synthesis of suitable molecular precursors, followed by the growth of porous 2D carbon nitride (CxNy) layers using two complementary approaches: traditional wet chemistry (i.e., the Fittig reaction) and UHV-based on-surface synthesis as described above. Particular emphasis will be placed on investigating the atomic structure, chemical composition, electronic and vibrational properties of the resulting CN-based materials, grown or drop-casted on different substrates.