” laboratory – and his colleagues describe a possible use of graphene strips, for instance in solar cells. Ruffieux and his team have noticed that particularly narrow graphene nanoribbons absorb visible light exceptionally well and are therefore highly suitable for use as the absorber layer in organic solar cells. Compared to “normal” graphene, which absorbs light equally at all wavelengths, the light absorption in graphene nanoribbons can be increased enormously in a controlled way, whereby researchers “set” the width of the graphene nanoribbons with atomic precision.

 
 
 
  Pictures can be downloaded from https://flic.kr/s/aHsk2r6NXR    
 

Bibliographical references

  • Graphene nanoribbon heterojunctions, J Cai, C A Pignedoli, L Talirz, P Ruffieux, H Söde, L Liang, V Meunier, R Berger, R Li, X Feng, K Müllen, R Fasel, Nature Nanotechnology, DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2014.184
  • Exciton-dominated optical response of ultra-narrow graphene nanoribbons, R Denk, M Hohage, P Zeppenfeld, J Cai, C A Pignedoli, H Söde, R Fasel, X Feng, K Müllen, S Wang, D Prezzi, A Ferretti, A Ruini, E Molinari, P Ruffieux, Nature Communications, 2014 Jul 8;5:4253, DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5253
 

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Support

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, by the European Science Foundation (ESF), by the European Research Council (ERC) and by the Office of Naval Research.