Wide-band-gap wrinkled nanoribbon-like structures in a continuous metallic graphene sheet

To generate a moderate band gap in a graphene monolayer is a very important but rather difficult task. A rare working solution of this problem is to cut it into one-dimensional (1D) nanometer-wide ribbons. Here we show that, instead of cutting the graphene monolayer, a wide band gap can be created in a unique 1D strained structure, i.e., a wrinkled graphene-nanoribbon-like (GNR-like) structure, of a continuous graphene sheet via strong hybridization between the graphene and the metal substrate. The wrinkled GNR-like structures with widths of only a few nanometers are observed in a continuous graphene sheet grown on a Rh foil by using thermal strain engineering. Spatially resolved scanning tunneling spectroscopy revealed a band-gap opening of a few hundred meV in the GNR-like structure in an otherwise continuous metallic graphene sheet, directly demonstrating the realization of a metallic-semiconducting-metallic junction entirely in a graphene monolayer.