What it is
A long-standing bottleneck for two-dimensional (2D) CMOS technology, a form of complementary electronics, is the lack of high-performance p-type semiconductors (materials that conduct through positive charge carriers, called holes). The authors report the epitaxial growth of boron carbon nitride (BCN) as one. By engineering how two precursors, monomethyl ammonia borane and ammonia borane, lose hydrogen and react at the surface, they overcame a mismatch in where and when boron, carbon and nitrogen atoms are delivered, which disrupts the uniformity of the crystal lattice. The result is a wafer-scale, single-layer BCN in which carbon atoms and pairs mostly replace nitrogen in a continuous, locally distorted boron nitride lattice, giving a sizable bandgap of 1.90 eV.
Why it matters
Wafer-scale arrays of BCN field-effect transistors reached a hole mobility of 100 cm² per volt-second and an on-off ratio of 10⁸, which the authors report surpasses current state-of-the-art p-type 2D semiconductors. Strong electron-doping tendencies, orbital localization and pronounced hole scattering have collectively impeded the development of stable, efficient p-type 2D materials, and the authors say the findings establish BCN as a scalable and stable p-type platform, bridging a critical gap in the materials available for three-dimensional monolithic integration of complementary electronics (stacking circuits in layers on one chip).
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Filed underGraphene research and applications, 2D Materials and Applications, Nanowire Synthesis and Applications
