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This article is part of the themed collection: 2020 Chemical Science HOT Article Collection. ; Fine management of chiral processes on solid surfaces has progressed over the years, yet still faces the need for the controlled and selective production of advanced chiral materials. Here, we report on the use of enantiomerically enriched molecular building blocks to demonstrate the transmission of their intrinsic chirality along a sequence of on-surface reactions. Triggered by thermal annealing, the on-surface reactions induced in this experiment involve firstly the coupling of the chiral reactants into chiral polymers and subsequently their transformation into planar prochiral graphene nanoribbons. Our study reveals that the axial chirality of the reactant is not only transferred to the polymers, but also to the planar chirality of the graphene nanoribbon end products. Such chirality transfer consequently allows, starting from adequate enantioenriched reactants, for the controlled production of chiral and prochiral organic nanoarchitectures with pre-defined handedness. ; We acknowledge funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Programme (Grant Agreement No. 635919 ("SURFINK") and 863098 ("SPRING")), from the Spanish MINECO (Grant No. MAT2016-78293-C6), Xunta de Galicia (Centro singular de investigación de Galicia, accreditation 2016–2019, ED431G/09), and the Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER). ; Peer reviewed

Open-shell graphene nanoribbons have become promising candidates for future applications, including quantum technologies. Here, we characterize magnetic states hosted by chiral graphene nanoribbons (chGNRs). The substitution of a hydrogen atom at the chGNR edge by a ketone effectively adds one pz electron to the π-electron network, producing an unpaired π-radical. A similar scenario occurs for regular ketone-functionalized chGNRs in which one ketone is missing. Two such radical states can interact via exchange coupling, and we study those interactions as a function of their relative position, which includes a remarkable dependence on the chirality, as well as on the nature of the surrounding ribbon, that is, with or without ketone functionalization. Besides, we determine the parameters whereby this type of system with oxygen heteroatoms can be adequately described within the widely used mean-field Hubbard model. Altogether, we provide insight to both theoretically model and devise GNR-based nanostructures with tunable magnetic properties. ; We acknowledge financial support from the MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 (Grants PID2019-107338RB-C62, PID2019-107338RB-C63, PID2020-115406GB-I00, PCI2019-111933-2 (FLAG-ERA grant LEGOCHIP), and Juan de la Cierva Grant FJC2019-041202-I), the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (FET-OPEN project SPRING, Grant No. 863098 and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship No. 101022150), the Xunta de Galicia (Centro Singular de Investigación de Galicia, 2019-2022, Grant ED431G2019/03), the European Regional Development Fund, the Basque Government (IT-1255-19), the Basque Government (PIBA Grant PI_2020_1_0014), the Basque Departamento de Educación through the Ph.D. scholarship No. PRE_2020_2_0049 (S.S.), the Spanish Research Council (LINKC20002). ; Peer reviewed