Book Description
Getting a deeper insight into the controlled chemical functionalization of graphene represents a pre-requisite essential for fully exploiting all the promising properties of this material. The central objective of this thesis is to resort to self-assembly in order to achieve a precise spatial organization of "active" functional groups on the graphene surface. In particular, these functionalities are meant to interact with graphene either by strong non-covalent interactions, inducing a local doping, or by a Scanning Tunnelling Microscope (STM)-tip activated chemical reaction, driving to the formation of a covalent bond. In a first part, we synthesized a tetrathiafulvalene and a hexaphenanthrocoronene derivative, chosen because of their potential electron donor capabilities towards epitaxial graphene grown on silicon carbide. In a second part, we synthesized a series of poly-phenyl or poly-phenyl-ethynyl derivatives, designed to present a radicalar (i.e. brominated precursors) or Diels-Alder (i.e. maleimide or anthracene functional groups) reactivity with graphene, by STM activation. STM and Raman studies have allowed assessing the self-assembling behaviour and reactivity of some of the synthetized derivatives.
