Room-Temperature, Low-Barrier Boron Doping of Graphene.
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.
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University , Nashville, Tennessee 37235, United States.|Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100190, P. R. China.
Lida
L
Pan
Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100190, P. R. China.
Yande
Y
Que
Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100190, P. R. China.
Hui
H
Chen
Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100190, P. R. China.
Dongfei
D
Wang
Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100190, P. R. China.
Jun
J
Li
Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100190, P. R. China.
Chengmin
C
Shen
Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100190, P. R. China.
Wende
W
Xiao
Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100190, P. R. China.
Shixuan
S
Du
Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100190, P. R. China.
Hongjun
H
Gao
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University , Nashville, Tennessee 37235, United States.|Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Vanderbilt University , Nashville, Tennessee 37235, United States.|Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory , Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, United States.
Sokrates T
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Pantelides
boron-doped graphene; first-principles calculations; scanning tunneling microscopy; scanning tunneling spectroscopy