Title: 

Low temperature activation of inert hexagonal boron nitride for metal deposition and single atom catalysis

 

Year of Publication:

2021

 

Authors:

Yu Lei, Srimanta Pakhira, Kazunori Fujisawa, He Liu, Cynthia Guerrero-Bermea, Tianyi Zhang, Archi Dasgupta, Luis M Martinez, Srinivasa Rao Singamaneni, Ke Wang, Jeff Shallenberger, Ana Laura Elías, Rodolfo Cruz-Silva, Morinobu Endo, Jose L Mendoza-Cortes, Mauricio Terrones

 

Journal:

Materials Today

 

Abstract:

Hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) has long been considered chemically inert due to its wide bandgap and robust covalent bonds. Its inertness hinders hBN from functionalization for energy conversion applications. A question arising is whether it is possible to make hBN chemically reactive. Here, we report cryomilling in liquid N2, as an effective strategy to activate the chemical reactivity of hBN by engineering different vacancies to produce defective-BN (d-BN). The local reactivity of the vacancies is probed by photoluminescence (PL) emissions and electron spin resonance spectroscopy (ESR). Density functional theory calculations reveal that the formation of different vacancies with/without oxygen cause the creation of mid-gap states that are responsible for the PL emissions in the visible region. These vacancies also generate localized free radicals which are both theoretically and experimentally confirmed by spin …

 

URL:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369702121003242