Molecular heterostructure by fusing graphene nanoribbons of different lengths through a pentagon ring junction

Graphene nanoribbons(GNRs)have attracted great research interest because of their widely tunable and unique electronic properties.The required atomic precision of GNRs can be realized via on-surface synthesis method.In this work,through a surface assisted reaction we have longitudinally fused the pyrene-based graphene nanoribbons(pGNR)of different lengths by a pentagon ring junction,and built a molecular junction structure on Au(111).The electronic properties of the structure are studied by scanning tunneling spectroscopy(STS)combined with tight binding(TB)calculations.The pentagon ring junction shows a weak electronic coupling effect on graphene nanoribbons,which makes the electronic properties of the two different graphene nanoribbons connected by a pentagon ring junction analogous to type I semiconductor heterojunctions.