Synthesis of the Biphenylene Nanoribbon by Compressing the Biphenylene under Extreme Conditions

Abstract

Nonbenzenoid graphenenanoribbons like biphenylene network has gained increasing attention due to its promising electronic and transport properties, but their scalable synthesis is still a huge challenge. Pressure-induced topochemical polymerization is an effective method to assemble the molecular units into extended carbon materials, and the structure and properties of the carbon material can be tuned by modifying the molecular precursors. Here, by directly compressing biphenylene at room temperature, we successfully synthesized crystalline biphenylene nanoribbon in milligram-scale. By combining the spectroscopy and single crystal X-ray diffraction methods as well as theoretical calculation, we found biphenylene experiences a minor phase transition above 3 GPa and two phenyls in biphenylene undergo sequential para-polymerization along the a-axis to form a ribbon structure at 14 GPa. Our work provides an important reference for the high-pressure reaction of aromatics and the synthesis of complex nanoribbons.