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Wafer-scale epitaxy growth of high-mobility p-type boron carbon nitride.

| Source: Nature

A long-standing bottleneck in realizing two-dimensional (2D) CMOS technology lies in the lack of high-performance p-type semiconductors 1-4 . Strong electron-doping tendencies, orbital localization and pronounced hole scattering have collectively impeded the development of stable, efficient p-type 2D materials. Here we report the epitaxy growth of boron carbon nitride (BCN) as a high-performance p-type semiconductor. By engineering the dehydrogenation and surface reaction pathways of monomethyl

A long-standing bottleneck in realizing two-dimensional (2D) CMOS technology lies in the lack of high-performance p-type semiconductors 1-4 . Strong electron-doping tendencies, orbital localization and pronounced hole scattering have collectively impeded the development of stable, efficient p-type 2D materials. Here we report the epitaxy growth of boron carbon nitride (BCN) as a high-performance p-type semiconductor. By engineering the dehydrogenation and surface reaction pathways of monomethyl ammonia borane (MMAB) and ammonia borane (AB), we overcome a crucial barrier: the spatial and temporal mismatch in the delivery of boron (B), carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) atoms, which disrupts lattice uniformity. The result is a wafer-scale, monolayer 2D BCN in which C atoms and dimers primarily substitute for N sites within a continuously crystallized, locally distorted boron nitride lattice, leading to a sizable bandgap of 1.90 eV. Wafer-scale arrays of p-type BCN FETs exhibit benchmark performance, with a field-effect hole mobility of 100 cm 2  V -1  s -1 , on-current >0.9 mA μm -1 , on-off ratio of 10 8 and threshold voltage of -0.45 V, surpassing current state-of-the-art p-type 2D semiconductors. Our findings establish BCN as a scalable and stable p-type platform, bridging a critical gap in the materials palette for three-dimensional monolithic integration of complementary electronics.

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