Room-Temperature, Low-Barrier Boron Doping of Graphene.

Pan, Lida; Que, Yande; Chen, Hui; Wang, Dongfei; Li, Jun; Shen, Chengmin; Xiao, Wende; Du, Shixuan et al. · Nano Lett · 2015

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Doping graphene with boron has been difficult because of high reaction barriers. Here, we describe a low-energy reaction route derived from first-principles calculations and validated by experiments. We find that a boron atom on graphene on a ruthenium(0001) substrate can replace a carbon by pushing it through, with substrate attraction helping to reduce the barrier to only 0.1 eV, implying that the doping can take place at room temperature. High-quality graphene is grown on a Ru(0001) surface and exposed to B2H6. Scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy confirmed that boron is indeed incorporated substitutionally without disturbing the graphene lattice.