Electrical Properties of Highly Functionalized Ultrathin, 2-Dimensional Hexagonal Boron Nitride

Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), an excellent dielectric material with a wide band gap value of ~6 eV, is widely used as insulating layer and gate dielectric in a wide variety of current electrical systems as well as emerging quantum based applications. Thus, much efforts have been invested in looking into modulating electrical properties of h-BN systems. However, much of the current state of the art h-BN studies have focused around larger flakes rather than thin films due to difficulty in uniform synthesis and surface chemistry, leading to low degree of functionalization. In this talk, we present electrical and tunneling properties of highly functionalized, ultrathin, 2D h-BN. Our h-BN are functionalized with TFPA-NH₂ and TFPA-SH molecules and electrical properties probed via conductive atomic force microscopy. Our approach reveals previously unachieved, high degree of functionalization, as well as electrical and tunneling properties of this novel system. Our results provide basis for understanding effects of high degree functionalization on h-BN thin films as well as additional incorporation method of h-BN into other 2D van der Waals heterostructure systems.