\n<\/strong><\/h3>\nWith the same honeycomb structure and lattice parameters remarkably close to those of graphite,2<\/sup> it is often considered as an ideal insulating substrate for graphene and as the best barrier material in vdW heterostructures.3<\/sup> All of these properties make h-BN ideal for use in electronics, photonics and optoelectronics, where it can be used to create a variety of devices, including transistors, photodetectors and sensors. As a result, h-BN has become a key material in 2D materials research and a promising candidate for future technological innovations.4<\/sup><\/p>\nFor all these reasons, it has become increasingly important to develop efficient and cost-effective methods for the synthesis of h-BN sheets. H-BN is not found in nature because its synthesis is a difficult process due to the high reactivity of its components that must be combined in specific ratios at extreme temperatures and pressures, which can be challenging to achieve. BN is thus produced only synthetically, mainly from pure boron, boric acid (H3<\/sub>BO3<\/sub>)5<\/sup> or boron trioxide (B2<\/sub>O3<\/sub>).<\/p>\nIn recent years, other various methods have been developed to synthesise 2D h-BN nanostructures. Two main approaches can be distinguished, the bottom-up approach and the top-down approach. The bottom-up approach involves growing or assembling BN nanostructures from small building blocks. These building blocks can be either inorganic or organic molecules. For instance, h-BN nanosheets can be synthesised from borazine (B3<\/sub>N3<\/sub>H6<\/sub>) molecules using chemical vapour deposition (CVD), a chemical process in which a vapour phase is used to deposit a thin film of material onto a substrate. The borazine is typically fed into a high-temperature reactor where it is decomposed to form h-BN layers on the substrate. The CVD-deposited h-BN films are mainly polycrystalline with a grain size generally of several tens of micrometres with a triangular shape. Wafer-scale deposits can be obtained but it is often necessary to transfer them to the target substrate for industrial process integration. The top-down method, on the other hand, involves starting from a pre-existing bulk h-BN material and then gradually reducing its size until the desired thickness is obtained. This approach is typically used to produce h-BN nanosheets using either chemical or mechanical exfoliation to break the Van der Waals forces between the hexagonal layers and physically separate the resulting 2D sheets of h-BN from the bulk material. Even if the size of the exfoliated structures is usually reduced and their yield can be small, the original quality of the starting bulk material is retained after exfoliation. Therefore, it is important to have large (on the order of a few millimetres) single-crystal h-BN sources as starting materials available for the exfoliation of 2D h-BN sheets that can be further integrated into commercial devices. However, achieving crystals up to the millimetre scale remains a challenge.<\/p>\nDeveloping the synthesis of h-BN in different forms \n<\/strong><\/h3>\nAt the Laboratoire des Multimat\u00e9riaux et Interfaces (LMI) of the University of Lyon, France, we have been developing, for many years, the synthesis of h-BN in different forms (fibres, thin films, nanotubes, meso or microporous membranes) for tribological, thermostructural, or energetic applications. The access to these specific forms is made possible by the synthesis route used, the pyrolysis of pre-ceramic polymers (PDCs), which consists in synthesising a molecular precursor and polymerising it into an inorganic pre-ceramic polymer that can be shaped before ceramisation.<\/p>\n
For the development of h-BN, the molecular precursor we use is borazine because it already shares its hexagonal structure with the target h-BN. Since liquid borazine is highly volatile at room temperature, for crystal growth, its polymeric form, polyborazylene, is preferred and is obtained as a white powder after a polymerisation process. The formation of h-BN by polymeric precursors is greatly enhanced by using an alkaline-based solvent such as Li3<\/sub>N, promoting the mobility of the species once melted.6,7<\/sup> Thus, the PDCs\u2019 route allows the elaboration of h-BN with tailored textural and structural properties.<\/p>\nTransparent crystal sheet of h-BN held with tweezers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nOver the past decade, with the integration of LMI into the framework of the Graphene Flagship, an EU-funded project that seeks to explore the potential of graphene-based materials, our research efforts have focused on improving the PDCs\u2019 pathway for the fabrication of h-BN nanomaterials. In particular, by coupling PDCs with different sintering processes, such as spark plasma sintering (SPS), pressure controlled furnace (PCF), or gas pressure sintering (GPS) starting from the same pre-ceramic polymer, the crystal size can be increased from a few microns to a few millimetres.8\u201311<\/sup> Furthermore, by combining PDCs with atomic layer deposition (ALD), functional BN nano-\/hetero-structures have been successfully synthesised from highly structured sensitive templates, making this ALD process a promising alternative for the fabrication of functional BN nanostructures.12\u201315<\/sup> It has been shown that the crystallinity level of the deposited BN material is strongly dependent on the crystallinity level of the substrate.<\/p>\nFinally, these h-BN materials, produced by the PDCs\u2019 chemical process, have demonstrated their interest in both electronic and optical applications. Indeed, it has been possible to realise, as a proof of concept, the first successful application of van der Waals heterostructures made of MoSe2<\/sub> and WSe2<\/sub> monolayers encapsulated in h-BN sheets realised at LMI.16<\/sup> Very encouraging results have also been obtained on metal-hBN-metal capacitor devices using h-BN from LMI.17<\/sup><\/p>\nThis demonstrates that the combination of the PDCs\u2019 route with shaping techniques provides an ideal platform for tuning the structure, crystallinity and morphology of the final h-BN materials depending on the chosen synthesis conditions, and the intended applications.<\/p>\n
References<\/h4>\n\nNovoselov, K. S. et al<\/em>. Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films. Science<\/em> 306, 666\u2013669 (2004)<\/li>\nHod, O. Graphite and Hexagonal Boron-Nitride have the Same Interlayer Distance. Why? J. Chem. Theory Comput<\/em>. 8, 1360\u20131369 (2012)<\/li>\nGolberg, D. et al<\/em>. Boron Nitride Nanotubes and Nanosheets. ACS Nano<\/em> 4, 2979\u20132993 (2010)<\/li>\nRoy, S. et al<\/em>. Structure, Properties and Applications of Two-Dimensional Hexagonal Boron Nitride. Advanced Materials<\/em> 33, 2101589 (2021)<\/li>\nBalmain, W. H. XLVI. Observations on the formation of compounds of boron and silicon with nitrogen and certain metals. The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science<\/em> 21, 270\u2013277 (1842)<\/li>\nYuan, S., Toury, B., Journet, C. & Brioude, A. Synthesis of hexagonal boron nitride graphene-like few layers. Nanoscale<\/em> 6, 7838\u20137841 (2014)<\/li>\nYuan, S. et al<\/em>. Low-Temperature Synthesis of Highly Crystallized Hexagonal Boron Nitride Sheets with Li3N as Additive Agent. European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry<\/em> 2014, 5507\u20135513 (2014)<\/li>\nYuan, S. et al<\/em>. How to Increase the h-BN Crystallinity of Microfilms and Self-Standing Nanosheets: A Review of the Different Strategies Using the PDCs Route. Crystals<\/em> 6, 55 (2016)<\/li>\nYuan, S. et al<\/em>. Pure & crystallized 2D Boron Nitride sheets synthesized via a novel process coupling both PDCs and SPS methods. Scientific Reports<\/em> 6, 20388 (2016)<\/li>\nLi, Y. et al<\/em>. Advanced synthesis of highly crystallized hexagonal boron nitride by coupling polymer-derived ceramics and spark plasma sintering processes\u2014influence of the crystallization promoter and sintering temperature. Nanotechnology<\/em> 30, 035604 (2018)<\/li>\nLi, Y., Garnier, V., Steyer, P., Journet, C. & Toury, B. Millimeter-Scale Hexagonal Boron Nitride Single Crystals for Nanosheet Generation. ACS Appl. Nano Mater<\/em>. 3, 1508\u20131515 (2020).<\/li>\nHao, W., Marichy, C. & Brioude, A. Promising properties of ALD boron nitride nanotube mats for water purification. Environ. Sci.: Nano<\/em> 4, 2311\u20132320 (2017)<\/li>\nMarichy, C. et al<\/em>. Fabrication of BN membranes containing high density of cylindrical pores using an elegant approach. RSC Adv.<\/em> 7, 20709\u201320715 (2017)<\/li>\nHao, W., Marichy, C. & Brioude, A. Promising properties of ALD boron nitride nanotube mats for water purification. Environ. Sci.: Nano<\/em> 4, 2311\u20132320 (2017)<\/li>\nMatsoso, B. et al. Synthesis of hexagonal boron nitride 2D layers using polymer derived ceramics route and derivatives. J. Phys. Mater<\/em>. 3, 034002 (2020)<\/li>\nMaestre, C. et al<\/em>. From the synthesis of hBN crystals to their use as nanosheets in van der Waals heterostructures. 2D Mater<\/em>. 9, 035008 (2022)<\/li>\nPierret, A. et al<\/em>. Dielectric permittivity, conductivity and breakdown field of hexagonal boron nitride. Mater. Res. Express<\/em> 9, 065901 (2022)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nPlease note, this article will also appear in the thirteenth edition of our\u00a0quarterly publication<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Discover how the LMI laboratory in Lyon has been developing the tailored synthesis of boron nitride by pyrolysis of preceramic polymers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":30146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24429],"tags":[24554,529,833,24477],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Beyond graphene: The exceptional power of two-dimensional boron nitride<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n