Afandi Abdulkareem, Howkins Ashley, Boyd Ian W, Jackman Richard B
London Centre for Nanotechnology and the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University College London, 17-19 Gordon Street, London, WC1H 0AH, UK.
ETC, Bragg Building, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UB8 3PH, UK.
Sci Rep. 2018 Feb 19;8(1):3270. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-21670-w.
The inclusion of boron within nanodiamonds to create semiconducting properties would create a new class of applications in the field of nanodiamond electronics. Theoretical studies have differed in their conclusions as to whether nm-scale NDs would support a stable substitutional boron state, or whether such a state would be unstable, with boron instead aggregating or attaching to edge structures. In the present study detonation-derived NDs with purposefully added boron during the detonation process have been studied with a wide range of experimental techniques. The DNDs are of 4 nm in size, and have been studied with CL, PL, Raman and IR spectroscopies, AFM and HR-TEM and electrically measured with impedance spectroscopy; it is apparent that the B-DNDs studied here do indeed support substitutional boron species and hence will be acting as semiconducting diamond nanoparticles. Evidence for moderate doping levels in some particles (10 B cm), is found alongside the observation that some particles are heavily doped (~10 B cm) and likely to be quasi-metallic in character. The current study has therefore shown that substitutional boron doping in nm NDs is in fact possible, opening-up the path to a whole host of new applications for this interesting class of nano-particles.
将硼纳入纳米金刚石以创造半导体特性将在纳米金刚石电子学领域开创一类新的应用。关于纳米级纳米金刚石是否会支持稳定的替代硼状态，或者这种状态是否不稳定，硼反而会聚集或附着在边缘结构上，理论研究得出了不同的结论。在本研究中，使用了广泛的实验技术对在爆轰过程中有目的地添加硼的爆轰衍生纳米金刚石进行了研究。这些爆轰纳米金刚石尺寸约为4纳米，并通过阴极发光（CL）、光致发光（PL）、拉曼光谱和红外光谱、原子力显微镜（AFM）和高分辨率透射电子显微镜（HR-TEM）进行了研究，并用阻抗谱进行了电学测量；很明显，这里研究的硼掺杂纳米金刚石确实支持替代硼物种，因此将作为半导体金刚石纳米颗粒发挥作用。在一些颗粒中发现了适度掺杂水平（约10硼/立方厘米）的证据，同时观察到一些颗粒被重掺杂（约10硼/立方厘米）且可能具有准金属特性。因此，当前的研究表明，在纳米金刚石中进行替代硼掺杂实际上是可行的，为这类有趣的纳米颗粒开辟了一系列新应用的道路。
