Crystalline Graphdiyne Nanosheets Produced at a Gas/Liquid or Liquid/Liquid Interface

Synthetic two-dimensional polymers, or bottom-up nanosheets, are ultrathin polymeric frameworks with in-plane periodicity. They can be synthesized in a direct, bottom-up fashion using atomic, ionic, or molecular components. However, few are based on carbon-carbon bond formation, which means that there is a potential new field of investigation into these fundamentally important chemical bonds. Here, we describe the bottom-up synthesis of all-carbon, π-conjugated graphdiyne nanosheets. A liquid/liquid interfacial protocol involves layering a dichloromethane solution of hexaethynylbenzene on an aqueous layer containing a copper catalyst at room temperature. A multilayer graphdiyne (thickness, 24 nm; domain size, >25 μm) emerges through a successive alkyne-alkyne homocoupling reaction at the interface. A gas/liquid interfacial synthesis is more successful. Sprinkling a very small amount of hexaethynylbenzene in a mixture of dichloromethane and toluene onto the surface of the aqueous phase at room temperature generated single-crystalline graphdiyne nanosheets, which feature regular hexagonal domains, a lower degree of oxygenation, and uniform thickness (3.0 nm) and lateral size (1.5 μm).