Novel plasma catalytic reaction for structural-controlled growth of graphene and graphene nanoribbon

An advanced plasma chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method has outstanding advantages for the structural-controlled growth and functionalization of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) [1,2] and graphene [3,4]. Graphene nanoribbons combine the unique electronic and spin properties of graphene with a transport gap. This makes them an attractive candidate material for the channels of next-generation transistors. However, the reliable site and alignment control of nanoribbons with high on/off current ratios remains a challenge. We have developed a new, simple, scalable method based on novel plasma catalytic reaction for directly fabricating narrow (23 nm) graphene nanoribbon devices with a clear transport gap (58.5 meV) and a high on/off ratio (10000). Indeed, graphene nanoribbons can be grown at any desired position on an insulating substrate without any post-growth treatment, and large-scale, two- and three dimensional integration of graphene nanoribbon devices should be realizable, thereby accelerating the practical evolution of graphene nanoribbon-based electrical applications [5].\\[4pt] [1] T. Kato and R. Hatakeyama, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 130, 8101 (2008).\\[0pt] [2] T. Kato and R. Hatakeyama, ACS Nano 4, 7395 (2010).\\[0pt] [3] T. Kato, L. Jiao, X. Wang, H. Wang, X. Li, L. Zhang, R. Hatakeyama, and H. Dai, Small 7, 574 (2011). \\[0pt] [4] T. Kato and R. Hatakeyama, ACS Nano 6, 8508 (2012).\\[0pt] [5] T. Kato and R. Hatakeyama, Nature Nanotechnology 7, 651 (2012).