In This Issue

Carbon nanotubes are carbon allotropes with intriguing potential applications because of their unique optical and electronic properties. A key intermediate in the bottom-up chemical synthesis of these nanotubes is the carbon nanobelt. Although progress has been made, new and distinct approaches to accessing different types of carbon-based materials are highly sought after. The Scholl reaction is an important method in the synthesis of polycyclic aromatic compounds, but its application to the synthesis of nanobelt structures has not been achieved thus far. In this issue of Chem, Cheung et al. demonstrate that carbon nanobelts can indeed also be synthesized by the Scholl reaction; proper choice of substitution enables π-extension of the preceding nanorings, and the reaction proceeds via only a little gain or even a decrease in strain energy. The method proves viable for the synthesis of the largest armchair nanobelt to date and even the first chiral carbon nanobelt