Anthracenylporphyrin based building blocks for the bottom-up fabrication of nitrogen-doped graphene nanostructures

Overview & Synopsis

The synthesis of graphene via bottom-up approach is a hot topic of research that aims to control the electronic and optical properties of this material by the fabrication of atomically precised nanostructures. Moreover, the control of dopant in graphene is of great interest to modulate the properties of the material. In this context, the contribution of porphyrins with a controlled content of nitrogen is attractive in this context. Because of structural similarities with graphene quantum dots (GQDs), π-extented porphyrins can be regarded as nitrogen-doped GQD with promising NIR properties. Porphyrins are convenient building blocks for the synthesis on surface of nanoarchitectures of graphene called nitrogen-doped Graphene Nanoribbons (GNRs) and Graphene NanoMeshes (GNMs). This thesis aims to develop the synthesis of symmetrical and robust porphyrins with anthracenes and to use them as precursors for the fabrication of nanostructures. The first part of this thesis is dedicated to the organic synthesis of variety of anthracenylporphyrins and the study of their assemblies on surface in a chamber of a Scanning Tunneling Microscope. The second part is dedicated to the study of formation of π-extended porphyrins via a method of flash pyrolysis able to thermally activate dehydrogenative coupling reactions between Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) and porphyrins. The last part is dedicated to the post synthetic modification of a tetrabromoanthracenylporphyrin with additional PAHs via Suzuki-Miyaura coupling and the characterization of the optical properties of the resulting porphyrins.