Narrow Carbon Pentaheptite Nanoribbon as a Covalent Metal

Research on graphene nanoribbons and related carbon nanostructures spans atomically precise synthesis, topological and magnetic states, electronic transport, carbon allotropes, and computational modelling. The references supplied here trace that development from early predictions of carbon-based metals and graphene’s electric-field effects to recent work on single-ribbon devices, localized excitons, polyene conductivity and a 2026 dataset on a narrow carbon pentaheptite nanoribbon.

Graphene nanoribbons and carbon allotropes

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Atomically precise synthesis and quantum states

9. Cai, J. et al. “Atomically precise bottom-up fabrication of graphene nanoribbons.” Nature 466, 470–473 (2010). Article
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12. Rizzo, D. J. et al. “Topological band engineering of graphene nanoribbons.” Nature 560, 204–208 (2018). Article
13. Kolmer, M. et al. “Rational synthesis of atomically precise graphene nanoribbons directly on metal oxide surfaces.” Science 369, 571–575 (2020). Article
14. Mishra, S. et al. “Observation of fractional edge excitations in nanographene spin chains.” Nature 598, 287–292 (2021). Article
15. Gu, Y., Qiu, Z. & Müllen, K. “Nanographenes and graphene nanoribbons as multitalents of present and future materials science.” J. Am. Chem. Soc. 144, 11499–11524 (2022). Article
16. Son, Y.-W., Cohen, M. L. & Louie, S. G. “Half-metallic graphene nanoribbons.” Nature 444, 347–349 (2006). Article
17. Blackwell, R. E. et al. “Spin splitting of dopant edge state in magnetic zigzag graphene nanoribbons.” Nature 600, 647–652 (2021). Article
18. Jiang, S., Neuman, T., Boeglin, A., Scheurer, F. & Schull, G. “Topologically localized excitons in single graphene nanoribbons.” Science 379, 1049–1054 (2023). Article

Spintronics, transport and electronic behaviour

19. Han, W., Kawakami, R. K., Gmitra, M. & Fabian, J. “Graphene spintronics.” Nat. Nanotechnol. 9, 794–807 (2014). Article
20. Wang, H. et al. “Graphene nanoribbons for quantum electronics.” Nat. Rev. Phys. 3, 791–802 (2021). Article
21. Novoselov, K. S. et al. “Electric field effect in atomically thin carbon films.” Science 306, 666 (2004). Article
22. Hou, I. C.-Y. et al. “On-surface synthesis of unsaturated carbon nanostructures with regularly fused pentagon–heptagon pairs.” J. Am. Chem. Soc. 142, 10291–10296 (2020). Article
23. Fan, Q. et al. “Nanoribbons with nonalternant topology from fusion of polyazulene: carbon allotropes beyond graphene.” J. Am. Chem. Soc. 141, 17713–17720 (2019). Article
24. Bally, T., Chai, S., Neuenschwander, M. & Zhu, Z. “Pentalene: formation, electronic, and vibrational structure.” J. Am. Chem. Soc. 119, 1869–1875 (1997). Article
25. Lawrence, J. et al. “Probing the magnetism of topological end states in 5-armchair graphene nanoribbons.” ACS Nano 14, 4499–4508 (2020). Article
26. Koch, M., Ample, F., Joachim, C. & Grill, L. “Voltage-dependent conductance of a single graphene nanoribbon.” Nat. Nanotechnol. 7, 713–717 (2012). Article
27. Young, S. M. & Kane, C. L. “Dirac semimetals in two dimensions.” Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 126803 (2015). Article
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29. Tian, M. et al. “Creation of the dirac nodal line by extrinsic symmetry engineering.” Nano Lett. 20, 2157–2162 (2020). Article
30. You, S. et al. “Quantifying the conductivity of a single polyene chain by lifting with an STM tip.” Nat. Commun. 15, 6475 (2024). Article

Related molecular and surface-structure studies

31. Seliverstov, A., Muzychenko, D., Volodin, A., Janssens, E. & Haesendonck, C. V. “Atomic structure and peculiarities of the electronic properties of Br layers on Ag(111) at different coverages.” Surf. Sci. 734, 122304 (2023). Article
32. Ong, A. et al. “Azulene-fused acenes.” Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 61, e202209286 (2022). Article
33. Yang, Y., Davidson, E. R. & Yang, W. “Nature of ground and electronic excited states of higher acenes.” Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 113, E5098–E5107 (2016). Article
34. Zeng, W. & Wu, J. “Open-shell graphene fragments.” Chem. 7, 358–386 (2021). Article
35. Van Hove, L. “The occurrence of singularities in the elastic frequency distribution of a crystal.” Phys. Rev. 89, 1189–1193 (1953). Article
36. Ma, C. et al. “Evidence of van Hove singularities in ordered grain boundaries of graphene.” Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 226802 (2014). Article
37. Mahan, G. D. Many-Particle Physics: Physics of Solids and Liquids (Springer, 2013).
38. Tang, Z. K. et al. “Superconductivity in 4 angstrom single-walled carbon nanotubes.” Science 292, 2462–2465 (2001). Article
39. Barja, S. et al. “Charge density wave order in 1D mirror twin boundaries of single-layer MoSe₂.” Nat. Phys. 12, 751–756 (2016). Article
40. Bockrath, M. et al. “Luttinger-liquid behaviour in carbon nanotubes.” Nature 397, 598–601 (1999). Article
41. Gross, L., Mohn, F., Moll, N., Liljeroth, P. & Meyer, G. “The chemical structure of a molecule resolved by atomic force microscopy.” Science 325, 1110–1114 (2009). Article
42. Fan, Q. “Narrow carbon pentaheptite nanoribbon as a covalent metal.” [Dataset]. Zenodo (2026). Dataset
43. Ju, H. et al. “Interplay between interfacial structures and device performance in organic solar cells: a case study with the low work function metal, calcium.” ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 8, 2125–2131 (2016). Article

Computational and microscopy methods

44. Kresse, G. & Furthmüller, J. “Efficient iterative schemes for ab initio total-energy calculations using a plane-wave basis set.” Phys. Rev. B 54, 11169–11186 (1996). Article
45. Kresse, G. & Furthmüller, J. “Efficiency of ab-initio total energy calculations for metals and semiconductors using a plane-wave basis set.” Comput. Mater. Sci. 6, 15–50 (1996). Article
46. Kresse, G. & Joubert, D. “From ultrasoft pseudopotentials to the projector augmented-wave method.” Phys. Rev. B 59, 1758–1775 (1999). Article
47. Perdew, J. P., Burke, K. & Ernzerhof, M. “Generalized gradient approximation made simple.” Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 3865–3868 (1996). Article
48. Grimme, S., Ehrlich, S. & Goerigk, L. “Effect of the damping function in dispersion corrected density functional theory.” J. Comput. Chem. 32, 1456–1465 (2011). Article
49. Monkhorst, H. J. & Pack, J. D. “Special points for Brillouin-zone integrations.” Phys. Rev. B 13, 5188–5192 (1976). Article
50. Smidstrup, S. et al. “QuantumATK: an integrated platform of electronic and atomic-scale modelling tools.” J. Phys. Condens. Matter 32, 015901 (2020). Article
51. Troullier, N. & Martins, J. L. “Efficient pseudopotentials for plane-wave calculations.” Phys. Rev. B 43, 1993–2006 (1991). Article
52. Hapala, P. et al. “Mechanism of high-resolution STM/AFM imaging with functionalized tips.” Phys. Rev. B 90, 085421 (2014). Article
53. Krejčí, O., Hapala, P., Ondráček, M. & Jelínek, P. “Principles and simulations of high-resolution STM imaging with a flexible tip apex.” Phys. Rev. B 95, 045407 (2017). Article
54. Enkovaara, J. et al. “Electronic structure calculations with GPAW: a real-space implementation of the projector augmented-wave method.” J. Phys. Condens. Matter 22, 253202 (2010). Article

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