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