Critical Role of Phenyl Substitution and Catalytic Substrate in the Surface-Assisted Polymerization of Dibromobianthracene Derivatives

Understanding the nature and hierarchy of on-surface reactions is a major challenge for designing coordination and covalent nanostructures by means of multistep synthetic routes. In particular, intermediates and final products are hard to predict since the reaction paths and their activation windows...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Moreno, Cesar|||0000-0003-2682-211X, Panighel, Mirco|||0000-0001-8413-5196, Vilas Varela, Manuel, Sauthier, Guillaume|||0000-0003-3566-3878, Tenorio, María José|||0000-0002-0855-7968, Ceballos, Gustavo|||0000-0002-6713-7963, Peña, Diego|||0000-0003-3814-589X, Mugarza, Aitor|||0000-0002-2698-885X
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Institución:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repositorio:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:222258
Acceso en línea:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/222258
https://dx.doi.org/urn:doi:10.1021/acs.chemmater.8b03094
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Catalytic metal surfaces
Catalytic substrates
Graphene nanoribbons
Metallic substrate
Molecular precursor
Phenyl substituents
Single precursors
Synthetic routes
Descripción
Sumario:Understanding the nature and hierarchy of on-surface reactions is a major challenge for designing coordination and covalent nanostructures by means of multistep synthetic routes. In particular, intermediates and final products are hard to predict since the reaction paths and their activation windows depend on the choice of both the molecular precursor design and the substrate. Here, we report a systematic study of the effect of the catalytic metal surface to reveal how a single precursor can give rise to very distinct polymers that range from coordination and covalent nonplanar polymer chains of distinct chirality to atomically precise graphene nanoribbons and nanoporous graphene. Our precursor consists on adding two phenyl substituents to 10,10'-dibromo-9,9'-bianthracene, a well-studied precursor in the on-surface synthesis of graphene nanoribbons. The critical role of the monomer design in the reaction paths is inferred from the fact that the phenyl substitution leads to very distinct products in each one of the studied metallic substrates.