Single Crystal Growth of Millimeter-Sized Monoisotopic Hexagonal Boron Nitride

By Song Liu, R. He, L. Xue, Jiahan Li, Bin Liu, J. Edgar. Chemistry of Materials, 2018

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Hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) with a single boron isotope have many enhanced physical, thermal and optical properties compared to the most common hBN with the natural distribution of boron (19.9 at. % 10B and 80.1 at. % 11B). These property differences can significantly improve the device performance in applications, such as neutron detectors, nanoscale electronics, and optical components. In this study, a new method for the growth of large-scale, high-quality monoisotopic hBN single crystals, i.e., h10BN and h11BN, was developed. hBN single crystals were grown using a nickel–chromium solvent and pure boron and nitrogen sources at atmospheric pressure. The clear and colorless crystals have a maximum domain size of around 1 mm. Raman measurements demonstrate that the crystals produced with this method are pure hBN phase with low defect density, and the spectral peaks vary with the boron isotope concentrations. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy spectra show that the B–N bond in h11BN is slightly stronger tha...

Subfields: Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/992e9fc43a87048ef0f5c78468f4a9e92707e0c2