11998 | J. Mater. Chem. C, 2017, 5, 11992--12022 This journal is
©
The Royal Society of Chemistry 2017
pretreatments, making most of them rather complicated and
time-consuming, and therefore difficult for integration into large
scale practical manufacturing. Therefore, new facile strategies
need to be developed especially in order to synthesize large-area
and high-quality 2D-hBN on common substrates to meet the
general demands and preferably be compatible with silicon-based
processes. Generally speaking, any synthesis procedure can be
optimized, in order to control the lateral size, layer numbers,
and crystalline structure, making the fabrication process more
compatible and maneuverable for specific applications. As
catalyst-type substrates, Cu and Ni foils are traditionally used
for graphene and 2D-hBN growth, due to their low-cost and
excellent catalytic performance.
83,84
For convenience, some typical CVD processes for hBN
nanosheet growth are summarized, which employed borazine
and ammonia borane (borazane) with Cu,
85–91
Ni,
92,93
and
Pt
29,94–96
as substrates, as shown in Table 2. Annealing at high
temperature makes the substrates recrystallize with larger grain
size, which guarantees the coverage of synthesized hBN to range
from tens of microns to several centimeters. The morphology
and nucleation density are highly dependent on the pretreatment
of the substrates and decomposition of the precursors. In this
connection, studies that are focused on the optimization of various
process parameters have been performed. The type and initial
precursor input rate, precursor purity, and background pressure
are critical for the successful growth of atomic hBN layers.
97,98
As
expected, the nucleation density decreases with a decrease in the
flow rate, and the lateral growth can continue until coalescence
with another domain, and vice versa. Due to the incomplete
thermolysis and incorporation of certain doping atoms arising
from the contamination of precursors, high-quality and uniformly
thin hBN nanosheets are more inclined to be formed at low
pressure with pure precursors. Especially, with the observation
of a dominant crystal orientation, monolayer hBN was fabricated
on the melting Cu foil on a supporting W foil with B75% grain
alignment and full coverage, which provides an extensive study
on the aligned growth of hBN single crystals over large areas.
A strong alignment of hBN leads to their convergence to
symmetrical multifaceted shapes (such as ‘‘butterfly’’ and
‘‘6-apex-star’’).
91
In addition to the common substrates, other catalyst-based
substrates were also explored. For example, uniform monolayer
hBN could be synthesized on a heteroepitaxial Co film,
99
but
the incomplete coverage is a major problem. By choosing the
Cu–Ni alloy as the substrate, Lu et al.
13
developed single-crystal
monolayer hBN grains with areas up to 7500 mm,
2
which is
about two orders larger than those reported previously. The
introduction of Ni could effectively reduce the nucleation
density to 60 per mm
2
, thus giving rise to large sizes of hBN
nanosheets (Fig. 4a–c). Likewise, an active Si-doped Fe sub-
strate could be applied to effectively tune the nucleation density
of hBN via controlling the amount of Si diffusion into the Fe
thin film.
100
However, the grain boundary between two hBN
domains seriously impacts the quality of the as-grown nanosheets
in spite of the controllability of nucleation density and even on
layer number. Based on this consideration, Kim et al.
101
devised a
promising strategy for wafer-scale and defect-free hBN fabrication,
where nanocrystalline graphene (nc-G) acted as a seed layer for the
growth of the large-area hBN (Fig. 4d and e).
To prevent chemical contamination during the transfer
process and make the process compatible with the CMOS
process, investigations into the growth of hBN on insulating
substrates, such as SiO
2
/Si, without catalyst and the subsequent
transfer process have been conducted. Yu et al.
15
reported a
catalyst-free method to grow hBN nanosheets on Si substrates
by microwave plasma CVD (MPCVD), where the triangular hBN
nanosheets thus obtained were ranging from 0.8 to 2.5 mmin
size with different tilting angles to substrates. Also, a mixture of
Table 1 The deta ils of other epitaxial strategies for the synthesis of hBN
Ref. Method Substrate Growth parameters Conclusions
77 vdW-E Graphene 900 1C
Borazine
10–100 Pa
Few-layer hBN preferred to grow on graphene than on SiO
2
/Si with
triangular morphology on narrow graphene belts, but with polygonal
morphology on large graphene films
78 vdW-E Cu(111) foil 1000 1C
Ammonia borane
The triangular monolayer hBN was synthesized in a low-pressure system
and it continued to coalesce to a thin film with increasing growth time
79 vdW-E Cu(102) and
Cu(103) foils
1035 1C
Ammonia borane
0.1 Pa
Triangular monolayer hBN was achieved with different unidirectional
aligned growth on different faceted Cu foils
80 MBE Poly-crystalline
Ni foil
730–835 1C for growth, 1850 1C
for B atoms, and RF-350 W
for active N species
1.1 10
5
mbar
Highly crystalline hBN nanosheets were achieved with wrinkles and
ridges over the entire film. The initial ‘‘star’’-shaped islands evolved
into a closed film with increasing growth time
81 MBE Ni(111) foil 700 1C for growth, 1900 1C for
B atoms, and RF-250 W for
active N species 1.3 10
5
Torr
Multilayer hBN films were achieved with very high structural perfection
and AB stacking of BN layers. The elongated shape of the stripes
appeared, which might be attributed to the tough surface
82 ALE Co(0001) film 600 K
BCl
3
/NH
3
350 mTorr
Highly oriented hBN(0001) films were obtained with excellent uniformity,
continuity, and conformality on the macroscopic scale. The thickness
is controllable, which is proportional to the number of BCl
3
/NH
3
cycles
Journal of Materials Chemistry C Review