Epitaxial growth of lateral graphene / hexagonal boron nitride heterostructures
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Perustieteiden korkeakoulu |
Master's thesis
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Authors
Date
2016-10-25
Department
Major/Subject
Physics of Advanced Materials
Mcode
SCI3057
Degree programme
Master's Programme in Physics of Advanced Materials
Language
en
Pages
42+4
Series
Abstract
With the growing 2D materials family, the combination of the semi-metal graphene, insulator hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) and semiconducting transition metal dichalcognides open new opportunities in understanding and controlling materials properties. The integration of graphene with h-BN in particular is considered as a promising way to engineer the electrical properties of graphene and implementation of more advanced theoretical ideas such as valleytronics in 2D materials. In this thesis work, lateral graphene and boron nitride heterostructures are synthesized by a sequential epitaxial growth method on nickel films and Ni(111) single crystals. The edges of the BN island act as a seed for graphene growth and atomically sharp graphene / h-BN interfaces with a length exceeding 170 nm could be achieved. This is limited by the size of h-BN seed islands. We also attempted the transfer of the heterostructures onto an insulating substrate by the electrochemical delamination method. While this method worked for transferring graphene grown on Ni foil, it was unsuccessful for the G/h-BN heterostructures. Most likely, the strong interaction between heterostructure and Ni(111) causes this failure. The interaction could be reduced by intercalating the heterostructure with different materials such as Br. Further work on the combination of the transfer techniques with our synthesis method followed by intercalation should make it possible to manufacture and transfer G/h-BN heterostructures onto insulating substrates.Description
Supervisor
Liljeroth, PeterThesis advisor
Drost , RobertKeywords
graphene, heterostructure, G/h-BN interface, eelectrochemical bubbling transfer