Inorganic Graphenylene: A Porous Two-Dimensional Material With Tunable Band Gap

TL;DR

This paper explores the creation of a new inorganic porous 2D material called Inorganic Graphenylene (IGP) derived from boron nitride, demonstrating tunable electronic properties through atomic substitution.

Contribution

It introduces IGP, a novel inorganic porous 2D material, and shows how its band gap can be engineered via atomic substitution, expanding possibilities for 2D material applications.

Findings

IGP can be formed through dehydrogenation of porous BN

Substituting B and N with C reduces the band gap

Band gap tuning enables transition from insulator to semiconductor

Abstract

By means of ab initio calculations we investigate the possibility of existence of a boron nitride (BN) porous two-dimensional nanosheet which is geometrically similar to the carbon allotrope known as biphenylene carbon. The proposed structure, which we called Inorganic Graphenylene (IGP), is formed spontaneously after selective dehydrogenation of the porous Boron Nitride (BN) structure proposed by Ding et al. We study the structural and electronic properties of both porous BN and IGP and it is shown that, by selective substitution of B and N atoms with carbon atoms in these structures, the band gap can be significantly reduced, changing their behavior from insulators to semiconductors, thus opening the possibility of band gap engineering for this class of two-dimensional materials.