THE RISE OF BOROPHENE AND BOROPHENE NANORIBBONS: A POTENTIAL QUANTUM ELECTRONICS MATERIAL

Abstract

Borophene, a boron analogue of graphene, has been considered as an innovative two-dimensional (2D) material for the scientific and research community. First 2D boron sheet was reported in 2015 by growing it on Ag substrate. Attributable to its exceptional structural, electronic, and spin properties, it has earned enormous exploration interests in the multifaceted fields of material science, nanotechnology and computational physics. Borophene is the newest rising 2D material, which demonstrates various diversified configurations that can be marked by anisotropic and polymorphism. These configurations enabled enhanced tailoring properties of borophene for various applications. This review provides brief discussion on various experimentally synthesized borophene and borophene nanoribbon (BNR), their structural, electronic, and magnetic properties variations along with the width effect. Based upon the type of edges, BNRs are categorized as line edge-BNR (LE-BNR) and zigzag-BNR (ZZ-BNR). Electronic properties of LE-BNR with vacancy defect show semiconductor behavior and ZZ-BNR indicates metallic property. It covers all the structural allotropes, their synthesis, stability and other crucial intrinsic properties, characterization and tailoring of physical properties. Hence, this comprehensive review reported here incorporates the crucial recent experimental and theoretical advances on borophene and BNRs till date. This work also covers recent modifications reported in borophene and BNR to alter their properties as per the demands of various application areas such as nanoelectronic devices, interconnects, biosensors, metal detectors and gas sensors.