1. Department of Chemistry and Laboratory for Advanced Materials, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA


2. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Correspondence to: Hongjie Dai¹ Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to H.D. (Email: hdai@stanford.edu).

Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) are materials with properties distinct from those of other carbon allotropes^{1, 2, 3, 4, 5}. The all-semiconducting nature of sub-10-nm GNRs could bypass the problem of the extreme chirality dependence of the metal or semiconductor nature of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in future electronics^{1, 2}. Currently, making GNRs using lithographic^{3, 4, 6}, chemical^{7, 8, 9} or sonochemical¹ methods is challenging. It is difficult to obtain GNRs with smooth edges and controllable widths at high yields. Here we show an approach to making GNRs by unzipping multiwalled carbon nanotubes by plasma etching of nanotubes partly embedded in a polymer film. The GNRs have smooth edges and a narrow width distribution (10–20 nm). Raman spectroscopy and electrical transport measurements reveal the high quality of the GNRs. Unzipping CNTs with well-defined structures in an array will allow the production of GNRs with controlled widths, edge structures, placement and alignment in a scalable fashion for device integration.