Phys.org November 29, 2022 A team of researchers in the US (Argonne National Laboratory, Old Dominion University) synthesized artificial graphene nanoribbons by positioning carbon monoxide molecules on a copper surface to confine its surface state electrons into artificial atoms positioned to emulate the low-energy electronic structure of graphene derivatives. They showed that the dimensionality of artificial graphene can be reduced to one dimension with proper “edge” passivation, with the emergence of an effectively gapped one-dimensional nanoribbon structure which showed evidence of topological effects analogous to graphene nanoribbons. They spatially explored robust, zero-dimensional topological states by altering the topological invariants of […]