Engineering Carbon Nanostructures

This lecture explores the engineering of intrinsic π-electron magnetism in atomically-precise carbon nanostructures, focusing on topics such as on-surface synthesis, functional surfaces, and the fabrication of low-dimensional materials. The instructor discusses the creation of sublattice imbalance, topological frustration, and the polarization of low-energy states to induce magnetism in graphene and nanographenes. The lecture also covers the collective magnetism in triangulene dimers and the development of tunable all-carbon spin chains and lattices, highlighting the chemical tunability of magnetic interactions and the expected long spin correlation lengths. Various scenarios of carbon magnetism are examined, including magnetism without sublattice imbalance, magnetism via topological frustration, and magnetism through the polarization of low-energy states.