Non-chemical fluorination of hexagonal boron nitride by high-energy ion irradiation

Two-dimensional materials such as hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) and graphene have attracted wide attention in nanoelectronics and spintronics. Since their electronic characteristics are strongly affected by the local atomic structure, the heteroatom doping could allow us to tailor the electronic and physical properties of two-dimensional materials. In this study, a non-chemical method of heteroatom doping into h-BN under high-energy ion irradiation was demonstrated for the LiF/h-BN/Cu heterostructure. Spectroscopic analysis of chemical states on the relevant atoms revealed that 6% ± 2% fluorinated h-BN is obtained by the irradiation of 2.4 MeV Cu²⁺ ions with the fluence up to 10¹⁴ ions cm^-2. It was shown that the high-energy ion irradiation leads to a single-sided fluorination of h-BN by the formation of the fluorinated sp ³-hybridized BN.