Tunable Band Gaps and p-Type Transport Properties of Boron-Doped Graphenes by Controllable Ion Doping Using Reactive Microwave Plasma

Abstract

We report tunable band gaps and transport properties of B-doped graphenes that were achieved via controllable doping through reaction with the ion atmosphere of trimethylboron decomposed by microwave plasma. Both electron energy loss spectroscopy and X-ray photoemission spectroscopy analyses of the graphene reacted with ion atmosphere showed that B atoms are substitutionally incorporated into graphenes without segregation of B domains. The B content was adjusted over a range of 0-13.85 atom % by controlling the ion reaction time, from which the doping effects on transport properties were quantitatively evaluated. Electrical measurements from graphene field-effect transistors show that the B-doped graphenes have a distinct p-type conductivity with a current on/off ratio higher than 10(2). Especially, the band gap of graphenes is tuned from 0 to ~0.54 eV with increasing B content, leading to a series of modulated transport properties. We believe the controllable doping for graphenes with predictable transport properties may pave a way for the development of graphene-based devices.

Band gap opening in stanene induced by patterned B–N doping

“…35,62 However, 13% B doping graphene has been synthesized. [66][67]68 On the other hand, the calculated formation energy (per supercell) for 31% B-N co-doped graphene is 4.08 eV, which is significantly lower than the formation energy of 15.60% B-doped graphene system. 35 However, 27% B-N co-doped graphene 43 has been synthesized.…”

High-performance solution of the transport problem in a graphene armchair structure with a generic potential

“…A gap can be induced by the lateral confinement in narrow ribbons with a transverse size of a few nanometers or of tens of nanometers, which can be efficiently modeled with atomistic techniques, such as tight-binding approaches. Fabrication of such nanowires is, however, very challenging, and therefore also alternative and/or complementary approaches to open up a gap are being pursued, such as the usage of bilayer graphene [5][6][7][8], of chemical functionalization [9][10][11][12], and of doping [13][14][15][16]. Large graphene devices (with a size of several hundreds of nanometers or of microns) can, however, be convenient (or mandatory) in radio-frequency or sensor applications, which do not necessarily require an energy gap [17][18][19][20][21][22].…”

Stability and electronic properties of isomers of B/N co-doped graphene

“…Doping with heteroatoms, especially B and N is a widely used technique to modulate the electronic properties (Panchakarla et al 2009;Wu et al 2010;Faccio 2010;Tang et al 2012;Gebhardt et al 2013) in graphene. B and N are neighboring elements of carbon in the periodic table and have nearly same size and mass that of carbon.…”