Versatile and scalable synthesis of graphene nanoribbons

•Graphene nanoribbons were synthesized using propanol and sodium.•Changing the alcohol feedstock affects the size of the graphene sheets.•Graphene nanoribbons form discrete bundles.•We examined the structure of chemically synthesized graphene nanoribbons.•We present a scalable method to realize graphene nanoribbons.

The inability to readily upscale nanofabrication of carbon nanomaterials often restricts their application, despite outstanding performances reported in both the research laboratory and prototype stages. Here we report the direct chemical synthesis of graphene nanoribbons by a bottom-up approach based on the common laboratory reagents sodium and propanol; these are solvothermally reacted to give an intermediate precursor that is then rapidly pyrolized yielding single- and few-layer graphene nanoribbons. Our results show that confinement of the lateral dimensions of graphene can be achieved simply by varying the alcohol feedstock. The ability to produce bulk quantities of graphene nanoribbons by a low cost and scalable approach is anticipated to enable a wider range of affordable real-world graphene applications.