Electron tunneling through atomically flat and ultrathin hexagonal boron nitride

Gwan Hyoung Lee; Young Jun Yu; Changgu Lee; Cory Dean; Kenneth L. Shepard; Philip Kim; James Hone

doi:10.1063/1.3662043

Electron tunneling through atomically flat and ultrathin hexagonal boron nitride

Gwan Hyoung Lee, Young Jun Yu, Changgu Lee, Cory Dean, Kenneth L. Shepard, Philip Kim, James Hone

Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

415 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Electron tunneling through atomically flat and ultrathin hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) on gold-coated mica was investigated using conductive atomic force microscopy. Low-bias direct tunneling was observed in mono-, bi-, and tri-layer h-BN. For all thicknesses, Fowler-Nordheim tunneling (FNT) occurred at high bias, showing an increase of breakdown voltage with thickness. Based on the FNT model, the barrier height for tunneling (3.07 eV) and dielectric strength (7.94 MV/cm) of h-BN are obtained; these values are comparable to those of SiO ₂.

Original language	English
Article number	243114
Journal	Applied Physics Letters
Volume	99
Issue number	24
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3662043
Publication status	Published - 2011 Dec 12

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the NSF under Grant No. DMR-1122594, FENA FCRP, Air Force MURI, and DARPA under the CERA program.

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)

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10.1063/1.3662043

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abstract = "Electron tunneling through atomically flat and ultrathin hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) on gold-coated mica was investigated using conductive atomic force microscopy. Low-bias direct tunneling was observed in mono-, bi-, and tri-layer h-BN. For all thicknesses, Fowler-Nordheim tunneling (FNT) occurred at high bias, showing an increase of breakdown voltage with thickness. Based on the FNT model, the barrier height for tunneling (3.07 eV) and dielectric strength (7.94 MV/cm) of h-BN are obtained; these values are comparable to those of SiO 2.",

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AU - Lee, Gwan Hyoung

AU - Yu, Young Jun

AU - Lee, Changgu

AU - Dean, Cory

AU - Shepard, Kenneth L.

AU - Kim, Philip

AU - Hone, James

N1 - Funding Information: This work was supported by the NSF under Grant No. DMR-1122594, FENA FCRP, Air Force MURI, and DARPA under the CERA program.

PY - 2011/12/12

Y1 - 2011/12/12

N2 - Electron tunneling through atomically flat and ultrathin hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) on gold-coated mica was investigated using conductive atomic force microscopy. Low-bias direct tunneling was observed in mono-, bi-, and tri-layer h-BN. For all thicknesses, Fowler-Nordheim tunneling (FNT) occurred at high bias, showing an increase of breakdown voltage with thickness. Based on the FNT model, the barrier height for tunneling (3.07 eV) and dielectric strength (7.94 MV/cm) of h-BN are obtained; these values are comparable to those of SiO 2.

AB - Electron tunneling through atomically flat and ultrathin hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) on gold-coated mica was investigated using conductive atomic force microscopy. Low-bias direct tunneling was observed in mono-, bi-, and tri-layer h-BN. For all thicknesses, Fowler-Nordheim tunneling (FNT) occurred at high bias, showing an increase of breakdown voltage with thickness. Based on the FNT model, the barrier height for tunneling (3.07 eV) and dielectric strength (7.94 MV/cm) of h-BN are obtained; these values are comparable to those of SiO 2.

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Electron tunneling through atomically flat and ultrathin hexagonal boron nitride

Abstract

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