Nitrogen and boron doped monolayer graphene by chemical vapor deposition using polystyrene, urea and boric acid

Abstract

Chemical doping with foreign atoms is an effective method to intrinsically modify the properties of the host materials. In this paper, we report a facile strategy to prepare nitrogen and boron doped monolayer graphene by using urea and boric acid as solid precursors. By adjusting the elemental precursors, the nitrogen content could be modulated from 0.9 to 4.8% for nitrogen doped graphene and the boron content from 0.7 to 4.3% for boron doped graphene respectively, as estimated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The mobilities of the nitrogen and boron doped graphene-based back-gate field-effect transistors are about 350-550 cm 2 V À1 s À1 and 450-650 cm 2 V À1 s À1 respectively. Our results are better than plasma treated nitrogen and boron doped graphene. Therefore the synthesis of nitrogen and boron doped graphene sheets by a solid doping elemental precursor method is considered to be an efficient approach to producing graphene with excellent optical and electrical performances at relatively low cost.

Epitaxial B-Graphene: Large-Scale Growth and Atomic Structure

“…One of the most efficient methods for the doped graphene synthesis is a chemical vapor deposition (CVD), which has become a key method for large-scale graphene growth on a wide variety of substrates. 18 The structure and catalytic activity of the substrate play a significant role in the CVD process and have a great impact on the structure of the obtained graphene-based system. Recent studies of nitrogen-doped graphene 19,20 have demonstrated that the Ni(111) surface is a very convenient substrate for the synthesis of doped graphene, tuning of its electronic structure and controlling the bonding configurations of the nitrogen impurities.…”

Incorporation of Boron Atoms on Graphene Grown by Chemical Vapor Deposition Using Triisopropyl Borate as a Single Precursor

“…High-energy resolution XPS measurements on boron-doped graphene have associated the peak with a binding energy of 189.6 eV to substitutional doping of graphene by boron atoms [20]. Wu et al [18] deconvoluted the B 1s spectrum of boron-doped graphene obtained by CVD from a solid precursor and assigned the peak with a binding energy of 189.7 eV to BC 3 , the chemical environment of boron atoms in the case of substitutional boron doping. Thus, the peak having a binding energy of 189.4 eV can be attributed to sp 2 carbon-boron bonds in substitutional boron sites in graphene, in good agreement with previous XPS measurements [20].…”

“…The incorporation of boron atoms in graphene was obtained by different methods: exfoliation of boron-doped graphite [14], arc discharge of graphite electrodes in the presence of diborane [15], thermal decomposition of boron carbide powder [16], thermal annealing of graphene oxide in presence of boron oxide [9], hot filament CVD [17], and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) using solid or gas precursors [7,[18][19][20][21][22][23]. The CVD technique could produce a single layer of boron-doped graphene with an extremely toxic and inflammable gas, that is, diborane, as the precursor [21,22].…”

p‐Element‐Doped Graphene: Heteroatoms for Electrochemical Enhancement

“…The more popular methods include thermal annealing of graphite/graphite oxides, [4][5][6][7] chemical vapor deposition (CVD), [8,9] and arc discharge. The available boron precursors range from boric acid, [6,8] boranes, [7,9] boron trifluoride, [4] and B 2 O 3 . [5] However, some of these precursors are less popular because of their toxicity, or because of their environmentally unfriendly or dangerous nature, such as B 2 H 6 and BBr 3 .…”