Graphene Nanoribbons

Graphene nanoribbons represent quasi-onedimensional graphene structures with a well-defined width of typically less than 10 nm. Fascinating properties such as excellent spin filtering or the existence of magnetic edges motivate applications for a new generation of nanoscale transistors or quantum computation. In the last decades, the fabrication of such ribbons with high purity was hampered by top-down approaches, which did not yield the necessary degree of purity to investigate or see nanoscale size effects. However, it is now possible to create well-defined graphene nanostructures using a bottom-up synthetic approach. We are interested in how spins interact with the graphene nanoribbon and how they influence its properties. Using EPR, we can, for example, quantify couplings in such systems, investigate hyperfine interactions, decoherence mechanisms and manipulate the interaction between multiple spin centres in an interacting system. In particular, we investigate how the edge state of graphene nanoribbons can be detected and controlled.