Macroscopic Single-Phase Monolayer Borophene on Arbitrary Substrates

TL;DR

This paper reports the successful synthesis, transfer, and characterization of large-scale, high-quality monolayer borophene on various substrates, enabling its potential use in complex systems and devices.

Contribution

It introduces a method for large-scale synthesis and transfer of borophene, preserving its structure and quality, which was previously limited to small samples.

Findings

Millimeter-sized borophene sheets synthesized on Ir(111)

Successful transfer of borophene to Si wafers via electrochemical delamination

Structural integrity confirmed by Raman spectroscopy and DFT calculations

Abstract

A major challenge in the investigation of all 2D materials is the development of synthesis protocols and tools which would enable their large-scale production and effective manipulation. The same holds for borophene, where experiments are still largely limited to in situ characterizations of small-area samples. In contrast, our work is based on millimeter-sized borophene sheets, synthesized on an Ir(111) surface in ultrahigh vacuum. Besides high-quality macroscopic synthesis, as confirmed by low-energy electron diffraction (LEED) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), we also demonstrate a successful transfer of borophene from Ir to a Si wafer via electrochemical delamination process. Comparative Raman spectroscopy, in combination with the density functional theory (DFT) calculations, proved that borophene's crystal structure has been preserved in the transfer. Our results demonstrate successful growth and manipulation of large-scale, single-layer borophene sheets with minor defects and ambient stability, thus expediting borophene implementation into more complex systems and devices.