title: Characterization and manipulation of individual defects in insulating hexagonal boron nitride using scanning tunnelling microscopy.
abstract: Defects play a key role in determining the properties and technological applications of nanoscale materials and, because they tend to be highly localized, characterizing them at the single-defect level is of particular importance. Scanning tunnelling microscopy has long been used to image the electronic structure of individual point defects in conductors, semiconductors and ultrathin films, but such single-defect electronic characterization remains an elusive goal for intrinsic bulk insulators. Here, we show that individual native defects in an intrinsic bulk hexagonal boron nitride insulator can be characterized and manipulated using a scanning tunnelling microscope. This would typically be impossible due to the lack of a conducting drain path for electrical current. We overcome this problem by using a graphene/boron nitride heterostructure, which exploits the atomically thin nature of graphene to allow the visualization of defect phenomena in the underlying bulk boron nitride. We observe three different defect structures that we attribute to defects within the bulk insulating boron nitride. Using scanning tunnelling spectroscopy we obtain charge and energy-level information for these boron nitride defect structures. We also show that it is possible to manipulate the defects through voltage pulses applied to the scanning tunnelling microscope tip.
authors: Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors: Dillon
authors: D
authors: Wong
authors: Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors: Jairo
authors: J
authors: Velasco
authors: Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors: Long
authors: L
authors: Ju
authors: Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors: Juwon
authors: J
authors: Lee
authors: Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors: Salman
authors: S
authors: Kahn
authors: Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors: Hsin-Zon
authors: HZ
authors: Tsai
authors: Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors: Chad
authors: C
authors: Germany
authors: National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba 305-0044, Japan.
authors: Takashi
authors: T
authors: Taniguchi
authors: National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba 305-0044, Japan.
authors: Kenji
authors: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3701-8119
authors: K
authors: Watanabe
authors: Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.|Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.|Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute at the University of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors: Alex
authors: A
authors: Zettl
authors: Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.|Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.|Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute at the University of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors: Feng
authors: F
authors: Wang
authors: Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.|Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.|Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute at the University of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors: Michael F
authors: MF
authors: Crommie