Contacting individual graphene nanoribbons using carbon nanotube electrodes

Abstract Graphene nanoribbons synthesized using bottom-up approaches can be structured with atomic precision, allowing their physical properties to precisely controlled. For applications in quantum technology, the manipulation of single charges, spins or photons is required. However, achieving this at level graphene experimentally challenging due difficulty contacting individual nanoribbons, particularly on-surface ones. Here we report and electrical characterization a multigate device architecture single-walled carbon nanotubes as electrodes. The approach relies on self-aligned nature both nanotubes, which have diameters small 1 nm, nanoribbon growth respective substrates. resulting nanoribbon–nanotube devices exhibit transport phenomena—including Coulomb blockade, excited states vibrational origin Franck–Condon blockade—that indicate nanoribbons.