Wafer-Scale and Wrinkle-Free Epitaxial Growth of Single-Orientated Multilayer Hexagonal Boron Nitride on Sapphire

Abstract

Large-scale growth of high-quality hexagonal boron nitride has been a challenge in two-dimensional-material-based electronics. Herein, we present wafer-scale and wrinkle-free epitaxial growth of multilayer hexagonal boron nitride on a sapphire substrate by using high-temperature and low-pressure chemical vapor deposition. Microscopic and spectroscopic investigations and theoretical calculations reveal that synthesized hexagonal boron nitride has a single rotational orientation with AA' stacking order. A facile method for transferring hexagonal boron nitride onto other target substrates was developed, which provides the opportunity for using hexagonal boron nitride as a substrate in practical electronic circuits. A graphene field effect transistor fabricated on our hexagonal boron nitride sheets shows clear quantum oscillation and highly improved carrier mobility because the ultraflatness of the hexagonal boron nitride surface can reduce the substrate-induced degradation of the carrier mobility of two-dimensional materials.

Active 2D materials for on-chip nanophotonics and quantum optics

“…There has been significant progress in epitaxial, large-scale, and high-yield transfer processes for certain materials including graphene [14,111,112] and MoS 2 [113,114]; on the other hand, the development of large-scale epitaxial hBN [115,116] and other TMDCs continually advances. These developments could soon provide a hybrid platform that heterogeneously integrates 2D materials with silicon CMOS technology.…”

Vapor‐phase growth of high‐quality wafer‐scale two‐dimensional materials

“…The single‐crystal substrate can also be used to produce other 2D materials . On the single‐crystal sapphire wafer, researchers realized the wafer‐scale preparation of hexagonal boron nitride (h‐BN) and TMD one after another.…”

“…Similarly, unidirectionally domain orientation can also be achieved through van der Waals (vdW) epitaxy of other 2D materials (such as TMDs and hexagonal boron nitride [h-BN]) on single-crystal substrates. 41,79 The epitaxial growth of unidirectionally aligned domains demands the 2D material to adopt the symmetry of the substrate precisely to avoid changes in lattice orientation during a symmetric operation of the substrate. Compared to graphene, most 2D materials have a lower symmetry (C 3v for h-BN), which are not compatible with the Cu (111) surface with C 6v symmetry.…”

Probing the Atomic Structures of Synthetic Monolayer and Bilayer Hexagonal Boron Nitride Using Electron Microscopy

“…As previously mentioned, in both cases, the formation of mirroring pairs is because of the lack of inversion symmetry in BN and NB. To date, in addition to lattice-matching metals with high-index facets such as Cu and Ni, aligned growths of h-BN have been reported on Ge and Al 2 O 3 substrates (Jang et al, 2016;.…”

“…The large-scale fabrication of such films presents unprecedented opportunities for future mass manufacturing and commercialization similar to those of the Si-based semiconductor industry today. In recent years, numerous research groups have attempted to grow atomically thin h-BN films and have succeeded in obtaining large films of relatively good quality (Jang et al, 2016;Kim et al, 2015;Tay et al, 2016b). One of the most successful and highly utilized methods developed thus far is chemical vapor deposition (CVD) onto catalytic metal substrates (Shi et al, 2010;Song et al, 2010).…”