Ultrasensitive gas detection of large-area boron-doped graphene

Lv, Ruitao;Chen, Gugang;Li, Qing;McCreary, Amber;Terrones, Mauricio;et.al.
(2015) Proceedings of the National academy of sciences of the United States of America — p. 201505993 (2015)

Files

PNAS-B-GRAPHENE.pdf
  • Restricted Access
  • Adobe PDF
  • 1.47 MB

Details

Authors
  • Lv, RuitaoSchool of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
    Author
  • Chen, GugangHonda research Institute USA Inc, Columbus
    Author
  • Li, QingSoochow University, Jiangsu, China
    Author
  • McCreary, AmberDepartment of Physics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park
    Author
  • Botello Mendez, Andrés RafaelUCLouvain
    Author
  • Declerck, XavierUCLouvain
    Author
  • Terrones, MauricioDepartment of Physics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park
    Author
Show more
Abstract
Heteroatom doping is an efficient way to modify the chemical and electronic properties of graphene. In particular, boron doping is expected to induce a p-type (boron)-conducting behavior to pristine (nondoped) graphene, which could lead to diverse applications. However, the experimental progress on atomic scale visualization and sensing properties of large-area boron-doped graphene (BG) sheets is still very scarce. This work describes the controlled growth of centimeter size, high-crystallinity BG sheets. Scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy are used to visualize the atomic structure and the local density of states around boron dopants. It is confirmed that BG behaves as a p-type conductor and a unique croissant-like feature is frequently observed within the BG lattice, which is caused by the presence of boron-carbon trimers embedded within the hexagonal lattice. More interestingly, it is demonstrated for the first time that BG exhibits unique sensing capabilities when detecting toxic gases, such as NO2 and NH3, being able to detect extremely lowconcentrations (e.g., parts per trillion, parts per billion). This work envisions that other attractive applications could now be explored based on as-synthesized BG.
Affiliations

Citations

Lv, R., Chen, G., Li, Q., McCreary, A., Botello Mendez, A. R., Morozov, S. V., Liang, L., Declerck, X., Perea-López, N., Cullen, D. A., Feng, S., Elías, A. L., Cruz-Silva, R., Fujisawa, K., Endo, M., Kang, F., Charlier, J.-C., Meunier, V., Pan, M., et al. (2015). Ultrasensitive gas detection of large-area boron-doped graphene. Proceedings of the National academy of sciences of the United States of America, 201505993. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1505993112 (Original work published 2015)