Scientists create atomically precise molecular chains to power next generation tech

23. 04. 2026 

Using donor–acceptor chemistry to create ultra-thin ‘nanoribbons’ - just a few atoms wide - could help to shape new electronic materials.

Scientists have developed a unique way to build electronic components so small they are made from chains of individual molecules - creating a toolbox to help build materials that could power the next generation of technology.

Publishing their findings in Nature Communications, an international research team led by the Universities of Birmingham and Warwick, has created ‘nanoribbons’ with tailored electronic properties.

This advance could help future development of: 

A new toolkit for molecular-scale engineering

Professor Giovanni Costantini, from the School of Chemistry and the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Birmingham and corresponding author of the study, said: “While atomically precise nanoribbons have been explored before, this is the first time they have been built by directly combining electron donor and acceptor units. Because we can choose exactly where these units appear, we can design their electronic properties in advance and realise them with atomic precision.

“By controlling the sequence and length of the molecular units, we can precisely programme and realise the material’s electronic properties in practice – paving the way for an unprecedented level of control, essential for next-generation technologies.”

Researchers used donor–acceptor (D–A) chemistry, a method widely employed in high‑performance plastics for electronics –, creating some molecules that ‘give up’ electrons and others that ‘take in’ electrons in controlled sequences.

Using advanced microscopes that can image individual molecules and even resolve atoms and chemical bonds within them, they could see the exact shape of each nanoribbon whilst detecting tiny irregularities and measuring how electrons behave within the ribbons.

Traditionally, nanoribbons have been made from graphene, which does not naturally behave as a semiconductor unless reshaped into nanoribbons or chemically modified with other elements. Even then, controlling the material’s electrical behaviour has been difficult.

Targeted molecular design by the Bonifazi Group

A synthetic group led by Professor Davide Bonifazi at the University of Vienna designed and synthesised two special molecules – an electron donor and an electron acceptor. The Warwick-Birmingham team then placed these molecules onto a gold surface in a vacuum and heated them so they would naturally join into nanoribbons, producing donor-only ribbons, acceptor-only ribbons, and mixed D–A.

Davide Bonifazi commented: “These results stem from our long-term efforts to design PXX-based π-conjugated systems as robust organic semiconductors. By embedding donor–acceptor concepts into these architectures, we anticipated the ability to program electronic behaviour at the molecular level and to prepare π-extended structures that are otherwise difficult to do in solution. The present work demonstrates how such molecular design principles can now be translated into atomically precise nanoribbons, opening new directions for functional materials.””

James Lawrence, who co-led much of this work as a PhD student at the University of Warwick and is now at the National University of Singapore, said: “This research creates a new toolbox for building electronic materials with atomic precision. Building nanoribbons directly on a metal surface can produce perfectly defined structures, which is difficult to achieve using traditional chemistry.”

Programming material properties at the nanoscale

Researchers discovered that as they heated the D and A molecules, these lost bromine atoms and bonded into chains. The shape of the chains depended on how the molecules met, and impurities sometimes caused bends or defects.

Longer all-D ribbons became better electron donors, while longer all-A ribbons became stronger electron acceptors. In mixed ribbons, the electronic properties depended on the precise sequence of D and A units. By establishing a simple theoretical model to describe this relationship, the researchers provide a foundation for designing materials with application-specific electronic behaviour through controlled subunit composition.

Gabriele Sosso, who oversaw the computational aspects of the work at the University of Warwick, said: “From a modelling perspective, these nanoribbons show how atomic-scale design can be used to fine-tune real world electronic properties. Capturing the effects of the supporting surface and local environment will be key to guiding this approach further.”

The next step is to apply this approach to design materials with targeted properties for organic electronics, bioelectronics, and photovoltaics. 

Original publication:

James Lawrence, Luka Đorđević, Fabienne Bachtiger, Harry Pinfold, Marc Walker, Jiong Lu, Gabriele C. Sosso, Davide Bonifazi, Giovanni Costantini (2026) Ultra-narrow donor-acceptor nanoribbons. In Nature Communications

DOI 10.1038/s41467-026-71660-0

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