Recent interest in two-dimensional materials has inspired numerous efforts toward the synthesis of polymeric materials on surfaces. With the substrate's ability to template growth in two dimensions, we may thereby create analogues of graphene with tailored chemical functionalities. While a handful of researchers have demonstrated the ability to grow well-ordered 2D structures, achieving long-range order in 2D polymers is challenging, and our understanding of the factors driving the growth is incomplete. In this talk I will describe the of our group's effort into the synthesis of these novel materials, and our characterizations using traditional methods of surface science. By simplifying the experiment to single-dimensional polymers, we have determined that the reaction intermediates play a significant role in the growth, and may have important consequences for producing ordered structures in 2D.

Role of the byproducts in on-surface polymerization

247th National Meeting (2014)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.