Rapid extension of nanographene sheets from readily available hydrocarbons
Commercially available hydrocarbons were used as templates to synthesize uniform nanographene sheets using a series of sheet extending agents and a new transition metal catalyst, which were developed by Kyohei Ozaki, Katsuaki Kawasumi, Mari Shibata, Hideto Ito, and Professor Kenichiro Itami at Nagoya University's Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITbM) and of the JST-ERATO Itami Molecular Nanocarbon Project. Nanographenes, which are nanometer-sized graphenes, possess good semiconducting properties making them highly promising materials for the next generation of organic electronic devices. Itami and his team have developed a new catalytic one-shot annulative π (pi)-extension (APEX) reaction, which enables the rapid construction of nanographene in a single-step.