A new collaborative study has reported a 17-carbon wide graphene nanoribbon and found that it has the tiniest bandgap observed so far among familiar graphene nanoribbons prepared through a bottom-up approach.

(a) Bottom-up synthesis scheme of 17-AGNR on Au(111), (b) high-resolution STM image, and (c) nc-AFM image of 17-AGNR. Image Credit: Junichi Yamaguchi, Yasunobu Sugimoto, Shintaro Sato, Hiroko Yamada.

The study is part of a project of CREST, JST Japan including Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), the University of Tokyo, Fujitsu Laboratories and Fujitsu.

Advanced materials group Versarien has been awarded a £5 million loan facility by a subsidiary of UK Research and Innovation.

The Versarien loan is for a project named G SCALE, (an acronym for Graphene-Seat, Concrete, Arch, Leisure, Elastomer) which is designed to enable Versarien to significantly increase its manufacture of quality assured graphene.