Fast crystallographic texture mapping of atomically thin hBN films on Ni(111) using secondary electron contrast

High-throughput characterisation and fast sample quality feedback loops are essential for accelerating the development of advanced materials and their technological applications. This is particularly pertinent to the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) driven industrialisation of ultra-thin device materials, like hBN, where a complex texture at the atomic layer level remains hard to characterise efficiently, particularly over large areas. Here, we show that secondary electron contrast can be used to fingerprint the alignment of monolayer hBN domains with the Ni(111) surface, thus opening fast crystallographic texture mapping capabilities with conventional scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Density functional theory (DFT) computations indicate a work function difference of 50 meV between the two possible epitaxial hBN orientations and around 600 meV between epitaxial and non-epitaxial (rotated) hBN orientations, where we also account for vicinal Ni surfaces. Through self-consistent secondary electron contrast assignment, we demonstrate the effective and systematic analysis of the large-area structure of hBN CVD films and how this can provide insight into their growth process and evolution, including the nature of the resulting domain boundaries, adlayers and overlapping bilayer regions.