Large area hexagonal boron nitride monolayer as efficient atomically thick insulating coating against friction and oxidation

Abstract

Coating is the most widely applied technology to improve surface properties of substrates, and nanotechnology has been playing an important role in enhancing the coating performance. However, the tunability of surface properties by a single atomic layer remains poorly understood. Here we demonstrate that a chemical vapor deposited hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) monolayer of large area and high quality can serve as a perfect coating to significantly improve friction, oxidation and electric resistance of the substrates. The exceptional low friction and insulation of h-BN monolayer coating facilitate the characterization of the h-BN film vividly by atomic force microscopy, showing the h-BN monolayer consists of domains with size within a few micrometers. This excellent coating performance together with the exceptional high thermal and chemical stability make the h-BN monolayer a promising coating material.

Aligned Growth of Hexagonal Boron Nitride Monolayer on Germanium

“…After the chamber was flushed with a 9 sccm H 2 at 90 Pa for 1 h, it was heated to 920 °C in 1 h and maintained at this temperature for the deposition of h‐BN. To synthesize h‐BN, the borazane power was heated in an isolated container to raise the gas pressure by 0.5 Pa . Finally, the chamber was rapidly cooled down to room temperature after the desired growth time.…”

“…The growth of h‐BN from the precursor of ammonia borane was conducted by using a low pressure CVD system as we described previously . Placing the polished surface of the Ge wafer toward a flat quartz substrate can simply and efficiently suppress the evaporation of Ge at growing temperature (920 °C) close to its melting temperature (938.3 °C), which may coarsen the Ge surface seriously (Figure S1, Supporting Information).…”

“…To explore the orientations of h‐BN domains, we reduced the growth duration to 30 min to prevent the fully merging of the neighbor h‐BN domains. The topography and orientations of h‐BN domains with partial coverage can be revealed facilely by FFM for the ultralow friction character of perfect h‐BN monolayer (Figure S5, Supporting Information) . As shown in Figure a, h‐BN domains grown on Ge (110) exhibit nearly equilateral triangles.…”

Realization of a p–n junction in a single layer boron-phosphide

“…[5][6][7][8] On the other hand, its clean monolayer hexagonal crystal structure, flatness and dielectric behavior (e D 3-4) make h-BN an ideal choice as a substrate for nanoscale transistors. In addition, h-BN has already been used in various applications such as protective coatings, 9,10 transparent membranes 7 and deep ultraviolet lasers. 11 A majority of the studies conducted so far have been limited to metal growth on supported h-BN, 12,13 energetics of various defects, 14,15 substrate induced nanomesh formation 16 and characteristics of various vacancy types.…”

Oxygen Functionalization of Hexagonal Boron Nitride on Ni(111)

“…[1][2][3] Similar to graphene, h-BN is believed to be inert, [4] possesses a high strain endurance, [5] and has apeculiar electronic structure. As for the 2D/3D couple graphene/graphite,t he properties of 2D h-BN differ greatly from that of the 3D layered material.…”