Beyond Graphene - Design, Growth, and Characterization of Alternative 2-Dimensional Materials

近年来，二维材料或1个（或几个）原子厚的平面薄片的发现引起了巨大的兴奋和研究活动。石墨烯、六方氮化硼（h-BN）和过渡金属二硫属化物（TMD）已经获得了最大的关注份额，并且在利用这些材料开发新型电子、光学和能源应用方面已经取得了进展。2-D材料在技术上的实际应用面临两个关键挑战：1）每种材料（如其3-D同素异形体）都具有可能限制其使用的特定属性。例如，由于石墨烯不具有带隙，因此其在电子设备中的传感或开关应用中的使用受到限制。这导致了对替代二维材料的初步研究（通过计算方法预测的最高性能），如硅烯，锗烯和磷烯，随后以某种方式合成。2)二维材料不容易大规模生长，并对制造工作流程提出了集成挑战。许多先锋实验结果报告的结果是机械剥离。从那时起，在化学气相沉积生长、化学剥离和其他制备方面取得了相当大的进展。然而，对于替代的2-D材料，很少有工作存在。 本研究计划的目的是开发一种新颖的，可扩展的方法来生长替代二维材料硅烯，磷烯和锗烯使用离子注入。 最近的工作表明，将碳注入铜中，随后进行退火，导致在铜表面上形成高质量的石墨烯层[1]。该提案旨在将其扩展到其他IV族2-D材料。在这项研究中，我们将开发1）适当的生长方法来制造晶圆级硅烯，锗烯和磷烯，2）描述离子注入和2-D层自组装化学的计算和热力学模型，以及3）原子，电子，和这些材料的化学结构，以及4）集成到基线电子器件中。这些发现最终可以为我们深入了解植入化学的基本过程，离子注入制造可扩展的新型2-D材料的机制，以及进一步研究的有趣的新材料。最终，这些新材料的成功生长可能会导致更快，更灵敏的电子设备，并且在硅烯和锗烯的情况下，可以集成（与石墨烯相比）到现有的半导体工作流程中。有可能在加拿大半导体制造业的商业进步和培训高素质的科学家作为这项研究的结果。

The discovery of two-dimensional materials, or planar sheets that are 1 (or several) atom(s) thick, in recent years has generated tremendous excitement and research activity. Graphene, hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD's) have garnered the lion share of attention and progress has been made in the development of novel electronic, optical and energy applications with these materials. 2-D materials face two critical challenges for their practical use in technology: 1) Each material (like their 3-D allotropes) has specific properties that may limit their use. For example, since graphene does not have a band gap, its use is limited for sensing or switching applications in electronic devices. This has led to nascent work (with superlative properties predicted by computational methods) on alternative 2-D materials, like silicene, germanene and phosphorene, which have been subsequently synthesized in some manner. 2) 2-D materials are not easy to grow at large scale and pose integration challenges for manufacturing workflows. Many of the vanguard experimental results reported on were the result of mechanical exfoliation. Since then, considerable advances in chemical-vapor deposition growth, chemical exfoliation, and other preparations have been developed. However, for alternative 2-D materials, very little work exits. The aim of this research program is to develop a novel, scaleable method to grow the alternative 2-dimensional materials silicene, phosphorene, and germanene using ion implantation. Recent work showed that the implantation of carbon into copper, followed by a subsequent anneal results in the development of a high-quality graphene layer on the copper surface [1]. This proposal intends to extend this to other Group IV 2-D materials. During this study, we will develop 1) appropriate growth methods to fabricate wafer-scale silicene, germanene, and phosphorene, 2) a computational and thermodynamic model that describes the chemistry of ion implantation and self-assembly of 2-D layers and 3) the advanced characterization of the atomic, electronic, and chemical structure of these materials using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and 4) integration into baseline electronic devices. These findings can ultimately provide us in-depth knowledge of the fundamental processes of implant chemistry, a mechanism for ion implantation to fabricate scaleable novel 2-D materials, and interesting new materials for further study. Ultimately, successful growth of these new materials could lead to faster and more sensitive electronic devices and, in the case of silicene and germanene, could be integrated (as compared to graphene) into already-existing semiconductor workflows. There is potential to for commercial advances in the Canadian semiconductor manufacturing sector and for training high quality scientists as a result of this research.