Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Nanopatterning Hexagonal Boron Nitride with Helium Ion Milling: Towards Atomically-Thin, Nanostructured Insulators

  • Articles
  • Published:
MRS Advances Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this report, we demonstrate the use of helium ion milling for the controllable fabrication of nanostructures in few-layer hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN). Using the direct-write lithographic capabilities of a scanning helium ion microscope (HIM), nanopores with diameters as small as 4 nm and nanoribbons with widths of 3 – 10 nm are etched from suspended h-BN sheets. This ability to pattern h-BN sheets with high-throughput and sub-10 nm precision paves the way for future studies that make use of atomically-thin, nanostructured insulators such as those needed for nanopore sequencing and patterned van der Waals heterostructures.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. W. Gannett, W. Regan, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, M.F. Crommie, and A. Zettl, Appl. Phys. Lett. 98, 242105 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. C.R. Dean, A.F. Young, I. Meric, C. Lee, L. Wang, S. Sorgenfrei, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, P. Kim, K.L. Shepard, and J. Hone, Nat. Nanotechnol. 5, 722 (2010).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. X. Cui, G.-H. Lee, Y.D. Kim, G. Arefe, P.Y. Huang, C.-H. Lee, D.A. Chenet, X. Zhang, L. Wang, F. Ye, F. Pizzocchero, B.S. Jessen, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, D.A. Muller, T. Low, P. Kim, and J. Hone, Nat. Nanotechnol. 10, 534 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Z. Zhou, Y. Hu, H. Wang, Z. Xu, W. Wang, X. Bai, X. Shan, and X. Lu, Sci. Rep. 3, 13770 (2013).

    Google Scholar 

  5. O. Ergen, S.M. Gilbert, T. Pham, S.J. Turner, M.T.Z. Tan, M.A. Worsley, and A. Zettl, Nat. Mater. 16, (2017).

  6. T.T. Tran, K. Bray, M.J. Ford, M. Toth, and I. Aharonovich, Nat. Nanotechnol. 11, 37 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Z. Liu, Y. Gong, W. Zhou, L. Ma, J. Yu, J.C. Idrobo, J. Jung, A.H. MacDonald, R. Vajtai, J. Lou, and P.M. Ajayan, Nat. Commun. 4, ncomms3541 (2013).

    Google Scholar 

  8. G.-H. Lee, X. Cui, Y.D. Kim, G. Arefe, X. Zhang, C.-H. Lee, F. Ye, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, P. Kim, and J. Hone, ACS Nano 9, 7019 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. G. Lu, T. Wu, Q. Yuan, H. Wang, H. Wang, F. Ding, X. Xie, and M. Jiang, Nat. Commun. 6, (2015).

  10. X. Chen, Y. Wu, Z. Wu, Y. Han, S. Xu, L. Wang, W. Ye, T. Han, Y. He, Y. Cai, and N. Wang, Nat. Commun. 6, 7315 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. F. Pizzocchero, L. Gammelgaard, B.S. Jessen, J.M. Caridad, L. Wang, J. Hone, P. Bøggild, and T.J. Booth, Nat. Commun. 7, 11894 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Z. Liu, L. Ma, G. Shi, W. Zhou, Y. Gong, S. Lei, X. Yang, J. Zhang, J. Yu, K.P. Hackenberg, A. Babakhani, J.-C. Idrobo, R. Vajtai, J. Lou, and P.M. Ajayan, Nat. Nanotechnol. 8, 119 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. L. Wang, I. Meric, P.Y. Huang, Q. Gao, Y. Gao, H. Tran, T. Taniguchi, K. Watanabe, L.M. Campos, D.A. Muller, J. Guo, P. Kim, J. Hone, K.L. Shepard, and C.R. Dean, Science 342, 614 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. C. Handschin, B. Fülöp, P. Makk, S. Blanter, M. Weiss, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, S. Csonka, and C. Schönenberger, Appl. Phys. Lett. 107, 183108 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. C. Forsythe, X. Zhou, T. Taniguchi, K. Watanabe, A. Pasupathy, P. Moon, M. Koshino, P. Kim, and C.R. Dean, (2017).

  16. S.M. Gilbert, G. Dunn, A. Azizi, T. Pham, B. Shevitski, E. Dimitrov, S. Liu, S. Aloni, and A. Zettl, Sci. Rep. 7, 15096 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. A. Sinitskii, K.J. Erickson, W. Lu, A.L. Gibb, C. Zhi, Y. Bando, D. Golberg, A. Zettl, and J.M. Tour, ACS Nano 8, 9867 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. K.J. Erickson, A.L. Gibb, A. Sinitskii, M. Rousseas, N. Alem, J.M. Tour, and A.K. Zettl, Nano Lett. 11, 3221 (2011).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. C.-H. Park and S.G. Louie, Nano Lett. 8, 2200 (2008).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. M.Y. Han, B. Özyilmaz, Y. Zhang, and P. Kim, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 206805 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. S. Liu, B. Lu, Q. Zhao, J. Li, T. Gao, Y. Chen, Y. Zhang, Z. Liu, Z. Fan, F. Yang, L. You, and D. Yu, Adv. Mater. 25, 4549 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. J. Feng, K. Liu, R.D. Bulushev, S. Khlybov, D. Dumcenco, A. Kis, and A. Radenovic, Nat. Nanotechnol. 10, 1070 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. S. Garaj, S. Liu, J.A. Golovchenko, and D. Branton, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 110, 12192 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. M.D. Fischbein and M. Drndić, Appl. Phys. Lett. 93, 113107 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. S.P. Surwade, S.N. Smirnov, I. V. Vlassiouk, R.R. Unocic, G.M. Veith, S. Dai, and S.M. Mahurin, Nat. Nanotechnol. 10, 459 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  26. D. Cohen-Tanugi and J.C. Grossman, Nano Lett. 12, 3602 (2012).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  27. K.K. Kim, A. Hsu, X. Jia, S.M. Kim, Y. Shi, M. Hofmann, D. Nezich, J.F. Rodriguez-Nieva, M. Dresselhaus, T. Palacios, and J. Kong, Nano Lett. 12, 161 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. W. Regan, N. Alem, B. Alemán, B. Geng, Ç. Girit, L. Maserati, F. Wang, M. Crommie, and A. Zettl, Appl. Phys. Lett. 96, 113102 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. V. Iberi, L. Liang, A. V. Ievlev, M.G. Stanford, M.-W. Lin, X. Li, M. Mahjouri-Samani, S. Jesse, B.G. Sumpter, S. V. Kalinin, D.C. Joy, K. Xiao, A. Belianinov, and O.S. Ovchinnikova, Sci. Rep. 6, 30481 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  30. Y. Deng, Q. Huang, Y. Zhao, D. Zhou, C. Ying, and D. Wang, (2016).

  31. D. Emmrich, A. Beyer, A. Nadzeyka, S. Bauerdick, J.C. Meyer, J. Kotakoski, and A. Gölzhäuser, Appl. Phys. Lett. 108, 163103 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    S. Matt Gilbert, Stanley Liu, Gabe Schumm & Alex Zettl

  2. Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    S. Matt Gilbert & Alex Zettl

  3. Kavli Energy Nanosciences Institute, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    S. Matt Gilbert, Stanley Liu, Gabe Schumm & Alex Zettl

Authors
  1. S. Matt Gilbert
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Stanley Liu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Gabe Schumm
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Alex Zettl
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Gilbert, S., Liu, S., Schumm, G. et al. Nanopatterning Hexagonal Boron Nitride with Helium Ion Milling: Towards Atomically-Thin, Nanostructured Insulators. MRS Advances 3, 327–331 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1557/adv.2018.117

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/adv.2018.117

Search

Navigation