Electron-beam assisted growth of hexagonal boron-nitride layer

•A good quality hexagonal boron nitride was grown with borazine precursor gas.•Cu(111) is a model surface to grow epitaxial hexagonal boron nitride layer.•We lowered the growth temperature of hexagonal boron nitride film by 100 K.•The lowering was achieved by introducing ionized or excited precursor gas.•The defects above and below a growth temperature window are revealed in this study.

It has been known that a good quality h-BN layer can only be grown within a narrow temperature window of 1020–1100 K on a copper substrate. We found that the growth temperature window on Cu(111) surface could be lowered up to 100 K by ionizing and/or exciting borazine precursor gas with an electron-beam. The structures of a hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) layers grown at various substrate temperatures on a Cu(111) were examined using scanning tunneling microscopy. We found that the grown h-BN film exhibits highly inert behavior with wide bandgap semiconductor characteristics.

Graphical abstractThe quality of h-BN layer grown on Cu(111) surface at 950 K with or without electron-beam.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide