From BN-Doped Molecular Carbon Scaffolds to BNC Sheets

In carbon nanoscience, the on-surface synthesis strategy emerged as a promising route to achieve structural control at the atomic scale. This approach might be applied to fabricate well-defined two-dimensional BN-substituted carbon nanomaterials with tunable electronic properties [1]. In this talk, I will review our activities on the self-assembly of BN-doped molecular precursors, including borazine [2] and BN-doped carbon scaffold [3], on noble metal supports. Temperature-induced dehalogenation and dehydrogenation reactions are applied to introduce intramolecular ring-closing and intermolecular coupling, e.g., yielding random BNC sheets, probed by low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The potential transfer and characterization of such two-dimensional BNC materials in devices will be discussed. [1] Sánchez-Sánchez et al., ACS Nano 9, 9228 (2015) [2] Weiss et al. , Adv. Mat. Interfaces, accepted, doi: 10.1002/admi.202300774 [3] Schwarz et al., Chem. Eur. J. 24, 9565 (2018)