The nanomaterial graphene outshines silicon in many respects, promising significant advances in next-generation composites and products. But graphene, a one-atom thick sheet of carbon, conducts electrons so well, it\u2019s hard to control for use in electronics. <\/p>\n
A team led by UNL chemist Alexander Sinitskii has developed a method to create a narrow band of graphene, or nanoribbon, that can effectively channel electrons and allow devices to control their flow.<\/p>\n
Researchers have been trying to create nanoribbons of just a few atoms width by carving them out of larger graphene sheets. But producing precise nanoribbons with the clean edges required for effective conductivity has proved elusive.<\/p>\n
Instead, Sinitskii and his team build the ribbons from the bottom up, using organic chemistry techniques to couple smaller molecules together. The process also allows scientists to fabricate nanoribbons in large quantities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe demonstrated that those ribbons have very high quality,\u201d said Sinitskii, a member of both UNL\u2019s Nebraska Center for Materials and Nanoscience<\/a> and the university\u2019s National Science Foundation-funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center<\/a>. \u201cWe also demonstrated that they\u2019re semiconductors, as we expected.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to being more efficient conductors than silicon, graphene nanoribbons bring other benefits, he added. Unlike brittle silicon, graphene is flexible. Using graphene, future electronic devices may be more durable or even foldable. Imagine a cell phone you can roll up and put in your pocket.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe we can make something that is even better than what we have right now.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Nanoribbons have silicon\u2019s photovoltaic properties and could one day lead to more efficient, smaller and flexible solar cells.<\/p>\n Sinitskii\u2019s team continues to experiment with creating nanoribbons of different widths and edge structures to explore changes \u2013 and possibly improvements \u2013 to the ribbons\u2019 properties. They also are developing prototypes of devices using graphene nanoribbons, in particular flexible transistors to use in electronics.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe we can make something that is even better than what we have right now,\u201d Sinitskii said.<\/p>\n In 2014, Sinitskii won UNL\u2019s Harold and Esther Edgerton Junior Faculty Award, which recognizes an outstanding junior faculty member who demonstrates creative research, extraordinary teaching abilities and academic promise.<\/p>\n Pictured above: Alexander Sinitskii<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The nanomaterial graphene outshines silicon in many respects, promising significant advances in next-generation composites and products. But graphene, a one-atom thick sheet of carbon, conducts electrons so well, it\u2019s hard to control for use in electronics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[139,97,142,141,258,140],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-alexander-sinitskii","tag-chemistry","tag-graphene-nanoribbons","tag-materials-research-science-and-engineering-center","tag-nanoscience","tag-nebraska-center-for-materials-and-nanoscience"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":666,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions\/666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.unl.edu\/annualreport\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}