Articolo in rivista, 2020, ENG, 10.1021/acsami.0c07548

Atomic Layer Deposition of Layered Boron Nitride for Large-Area 2D Electronics

Jaebeom Lee, Arul Vigneswar Ravichandran, Jaidah Mohan, Lanxia Cheng, Antonio T Lucero, Hui Zhu, Zifan Che, Massimo Catalano, Moon J Kim, Robert M Wallace, Archana Venugopal, Woong Choi, Luigi Colombo, Jiyoung Kim

UTD, CNR IMM

Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) has been considered a promising dielectric for two-dimensional (2D) material-based electronics due to its atomically smooth and charge-free interface with an in-plane lattice constant similar to that of graphene. Here, we report atomic layer deposition of boron nitride (ALD-BN) using BCl3 and NH3 precursors directly on thermal SiO2 substrates at a relatively low temperature of 600 °C. The films were characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy wherein the uniform, atomically smooth, and nanocrystalline layered-BN thin film growth is observed. The growth rate is ~0.042 nm/cycle at 600 °C, a temperature significantly lower than that of h-BN grown by chemical vapor deposition. The dielectric properties of the ALD-BN measured from Metal Oxide Semiconductor Capacitors are comparable with that of SiO2. Moreover, the ALD-BN exhibits a 2-fold increase in carrier mobility of graphene field effect transistors (G-FETs/ALD-BN/SiO2) due to the lower surface charge density and inert surface of ALD-BN in comparison to that of G-FETs fabricated on bare SiO2. Therefore, this work suggests that the transfer-free deposition of ALD-BN on SiO2 may be a promising candidate as a substrate for high performance graphene devices.

ACS applied materials & interfaces (Online)

Keywords

atomic layer deposition, ALD, BN, Boron niride, 2D materials, Large-Area 2D Electronics, Transmission electron microscopy

CNR authors

Catalano Massimo

CNR institutes