Into a New Plane - Three-Dimensionally Delocalised Nano-Graphenes

Graphene is a cornerstone material in nanotechnology with its isolation in 2004 leading to the Nobel Prize in Physics for Geim and Novoselov in 2010. Graphene consists of a one-atom thick sheet of hexagonally arranged carbon atoms which share electrons to create a fully electronically delocalised surface. Nanographenes, and related graphene nanoribbons, are fragments of graphene which can be produced through controlled chemical synthesis. This has useful consequences such as reproducible synthesis and the ability to dictate the edge-structure structure of graphene. Controlling the edge-structure of these materials is key to their utility in applications including topological insulators, organic solar cells and hydrogen storage.

This project will establish a new dimension in graphene, literally. It will yield unique 3D nanographenes with controlled edge-structure which are synthesised using robust "bottom-up" synthetic pathways. This will allow for synthesis on a larger scale and improved solubility compared to existing planar nanographenes and graphene nanoribbons. Through pi-extension or self-assembly methods these new molecular materials will be transformed into hierarchical nanostructures to produce fully three-dimensionally delocalised supramolecular and macromolecular constructs. The optoelectronic properties of these new nanographenes, and assemblies thereof, will be quantified using advanced photophysical and electrochemical tools complemented by charge transport measurements and computational insights. Benchmarking these functional properties against existing 2D nanographenes, and graphene nanoplatelets themselves, will establish a new chemical space in nanotechnology and produce unprecedented novel molecular materials.