Honeycomb metal-organic frameworks on graphene

Two-dimensional (2D) metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been recently proposed as a flexible material platform for realizing exotic quantum phases including topological and anomalous quantum Hall insulators. Experimentally, direct synthesis of 2D MOFs has been essentially confined to metal substrates, where the strong interaction with the substrate masks the intrinsic electronic properties of the MOF. We demonstrate synthesis of 2D honeycomb MOFs on epitaxial graphene and show the formation of a 2D band structure in the MOF decoupled from the substrate. These results open the experimental path towards MOF-based designer electronic materials with complex, engineered electronic structures.The work is published in Nano Letters (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.8b02062).