Abstract
One-dimensional (1D) catalytic etching was investigated in few-layer hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) films. Etching of hBN was shown to share a number of similarities with that of graphitic films. As in graphitic films, etch tracks in hBN commenced at film edges and occurred predominantly along certain crystal directions of its lattice, though it was shown that the tracks were generally narrower than those of few-layer graphene under similar processing conditions. It was also shown that catalytic hydrogenation can occur completely through a few-layer hBN film, demonstrating that this process can be used in the formation of isolated low-dimensional nanoscale structures from other layered 2D materials beyond graphene. This ability for thin hBN films to be etched completely through allowed for a crystalline substrate to guide the etching process, which was demonstrated with the successful etch track formation of few-layer hBN on single-crystalline sapphire substrates. The substrate-guided etching resulted in parallel few-layer hBN nanoribbons having an average width of 32 nm and spacing of 13 nm.
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Acknowledgements
The portion of the reported work on the few-layer graphene/hBN heterostructures was supported by the Department of Energy (DOE) Condensed Matter Physics (CMP) and EPSCoR programs through grant No. 0000223282, with additional coordinated funds from the Kentucky EPSCoR Program through the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation (KSTC). The portion of the reported work on the etching of few-layer films on r-plane sapphire substrates was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (CBET) program through grant No. 1603152.
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Ansary, A., Nasseri, M., Boland, M.J. et al. Parallel boron nitride nanoribbons and etch tracks formed through catalytic etching. Nano Res. 11, 4874–4882 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-018-2076-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-018-2076-y