Electronic structure of well-aligned zigzag polymers on a vicinal Ag(111) crystal

Carbon based low-dimensional nanostructures such as on-surface synthesized Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) and oligophenylene chains provide a vast playground for developing organic semiconductors with specific electronic properties. For instance, recent ARPES and STM/STS band structure studies on macroscopically aligned poly (para-phenylene) (PPP) and armchair-GNRs resulted in highly dispersive electronic bands with a large HOMO-LUMO gap. Analogously, we generate atomically precise, wellaligned and covalently bonded zigzag polymers on a curved vicinal Ag(111) surface. With the use of ARPES, we unravel its band structure for the first time and find weakly dispersive bands with considerably increased HOMO LUMO gap. These results, supported with DFT calculations, suggest a strong tunability of the polymer’s electronic properties, which can be correlated to its topology.