From borophene polymorphs towards a single honeycomb borophane phase : reduction of hexagonal boron layers on Al(111)
(2023) In Nanoscale 15(45). p.18407-18414- Abstract
The recent interest in characterizing 2D boron polymorphs has led to claims of the first stabilization of a honeycomb phase with conical Dirac-like electron dispersion. However, the synthesis of chemically stable, single, and homogeneous 2D boron phases still represents a significant experimental challenge. This is ascribed to the intrinsic boron electronic configuration that, at variance with carbon, leads to the formation of multi-center covalent bonds. External charge compensation by substrate-induced doping can steer the geometry of the layer, both in the buckling and in the density of B vacancies, like in the case of the recently achieved stabilization of honeycomb boron layers on Al(111). The price to pay is however a strong... (More)
The recent interest in characterizing 2D boron polymorphs has led to claims of the first stabilization of a honeycomb phase with conical Dirac-like electron dispersion. However, the synthesis of chemically stable, single, and homogeneous 2D boron phases still represents a significant experimental challenge. This is ascribed to the intrinsic boron electronic configuration that, at variance with carbon, leads to the formation of multi-center covalent bonds. External charge compensation by substrate-induced doping can steer the geometry of the layer, both in the buckling and in the density of B vacancies, like in the case of the recently achieved stabilization of honeycomb boron layers on Al(111). The price to pay is however a strong boron-support interaction, resulting in general in a limiting kinetic hindrance with respect to the synthesis of homogenous single phases. In the specific case of Al(111) an AlB2 layer is known to form at the surface, quite far from a desirable quasi-freestanding borophene monolayer and at variance with graphene, which can be easily synthesized in an almost freestanding configuration e.g. on Ir(111). We provide here evidence for the (reversible) formation of well-ordered honeycomb borophane upon hydrogenation of the honeycomb boron phase on Al(111).
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- author
- Biasin, Pietro ; Safari, Mandana ; Ghidorsi, Elena ; Baronio, Stefania ; Scardamaglia, Mattia LU ; Preobrajenski, Alexei LU ; de Gironcoli, Stefano ; Baroni, Stefano and Vesselli, Erik
- organization
- publishing date
- 2023-10-30
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- in
- Nanoscale
- volume
- 15
- issue
- 45
- pages
- 8 pages
- publisher
- Royal Society of Chemistry
- external identifiers
-
- pmid:37936532
- scopus:85176259803
- ISSN
- 2040-3364
- DOI
- 10.1039/d3nr02399k
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- additional info
- Funding Information: This work was supported by the Italian MUR through project PRIN 2017KFY7XF and by the University of Trieste through the project FRA2022. We acknowledge MAX IV Laboratory for time on Beamline FlexPES under Proposal 20220034. Research conducted at MAX IV, a Swedish national user facility, is supported by the Swedish Research council under contract 2018-07152, the Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems under contract 2018-04969, and Formas under contract 2019-02496. This work was also partially supported by the European Commission through the MaX Centre of Excellence for supercomputing applications (grant number 10109337) and the Italian National Centre for HPC, Big Data, and Quantum Computing (grant number CN00000013). MS wishes to thank Pietro Delugas for many useful discussions on using the GPU accelerator for phonon calculations. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Royal Society of Chemistry.
- id
- 8f4f8d14-6bf9-4e67-9f31-c1ac0d670692
- date added to LUP
- 2024-01-05 10:55:03
- date last changed
- 2024-04-20 07:16:01
@article{8f4f8d14-6bf9-4e67-9f31-c1ac0d670692,
abstract = {{<p>The recent interest in characterizing 2D boron polymorphs has led to claims of the first stabilization of a honeycomb phase with conical Dirac-like electron dispersion. However, the synthesis of chemically stable, single, and homogeneous 2D boron phases still represents a significant experimental challenge. This is ascribed to the intrinsic boron electronic configuration that, at variance with carbon, leads to the formation of multi-center covalent bonds. External charge compensation by substrate-induced doping can steer the geometry of the layer, both in the buckling and in the density of B vacancies, like in the case of the recently achieved stabilization of honeycomb boron layers on Al(111). The price to pay is however a strong boron-support interaction, resulting in general in a limiting kinetic hindrance with respect to the synthesis of homogenous single phases. In the specific case of Al(111) an AlB<sub>2</sub> layer is known to form at the surface, quite far from a desirable quasi-freestanding borophene monolayer and at variance with graphene, which can be easily synthesized in an almost freestanding configuration e.g. on Ir(111). We provide here evidence for the (reversible) formation of well-ordered honeycomb borophane upon hydrogenation of the honeycomb boron phase on Al(111).</p>}},
author = {{Biasin, Pietro and Safari, Mandana and Ghidorsi, Elena and Baronio, Stefania and Scardamaglia, Mattia and Preobrajenski, Alexei and de Gironcoli, Stefano and Baroni, Stefano and Vesselli, Erik}},
issn = {{2040-3364}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{10}},
number = {{45}},
pages = {{18407--18414}},
publisher = {{Royal Society of Chemistry}},
series = {{Nanoscale}},
title = {{From borophene polymorphs towards a single honeycomb borophane phase : reduction of hexagonal boron layers on Al(111)}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/d3nr02399k}},
doi = {{10.1039/d3nr02399k}},
volume = {{15}},
year = {{2023}},
}