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Oxygen Intercalation and Oxidation of Atomically Thin h-BN Grown on a Curved Ni Crystal

2018; American Chemical Society; Volume: 123; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1021/acs.jpcc.8b10574

1932-7455

Anna A. Makarova, Laura Fernández, Dmitry Yu. Usachov, Alexander Fedorov, Kirill A. Bokai, Д. А. Смирнов, C. Laubschat, D. V. Vyalikh, Frederik Schiller, J. Enrique Ortega,

2D Materials and Applications

We study the effect of thermal oxygen exposure on a monolayer of h-BN grown on vicinal Ni surfaces by scanning tunneling microscopy, X-ray absorption, and photoemission spectroscopies. Using a curved Ni crystal, we carry out a systematic exploration of the h-BN monolayer interfacing a full variety of vicinal orientations around the (111) high-symmetry direction. We demonstrate the occurrence of two processes upon oxygen exposure: oxygen intercalation underneath the h-BN layer, which leads to decoupling of the h-BN from the substrate, and oxidation of h-BN itself, which proceeds via substitution of nitrogen atoms. Oxygen intercalation appears to be substrate orientation dependent, while oxidation of h-BN is rather uniform over the different vicinal planes. These findings will be of importance for future applications of BN-based devices and materials under ambient conditions.