Nucleation and growth of atomically thin hexagonal boron nitride on Ni/MgO(111) by molecular beam epitaxy

Abstract

Scalable fabrication of atomically thin hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) films is highly important for the future implementation of this two-dimensional dielectric in various applications. In this contribution, we report on systematical growth experiments of few-layer thick h-BN, synthesized by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), on crystalline Ni films deposited on MgO(111). The samples are studied using scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and synchrotron-based grazing incidence diffraction. Growth parameters for the realization of continuous h-BN films with high structural quality are presented and discussed. Additionally, our study also aims at gaining insight into the nucleation and growth behavior of h-BN on the Ni surface, which is crucial for achieving further improvement in terms of crystal quality and thickness homogeneity of h-BN layers grown not only by MBE but also by other methods.