Bottom-up fabrication and characterization of boron doped N$=$7 armchair graphene nanoribbons

Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) have recently attracted great interest because of their novel electronic and magnetic properties, as well as the significant potential they have for device applications. Although several top-down techniques exist for fabricating GNRs, only bottom-up synthesis of GNRs from molecular precursors yields nanoribbons with atomic-scale structural control. Here we report the successful bottom-up fabrication boron doped N$=$7 armchair graphene nanoribbons. Substitutional boron atoms were incorporated into the GNRs' central backbone, thus placing boron's empty p-orbital in conjugation with the extended pi system of the GNR. Topographic and local electronic structure characterization was performed via STM and CO-tip-functionalized nc-AFM, and compared to DFT simulations.