Chemically detaching hBN crystals grown at atmospheric pressure and high temperature for high-performance graphene devices

Taoufiq Ouaj, Leonard Kramme, Marvin Metzelaars, Jiahan Li, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, James H. Edgar, Bernd Beschoten, Paul Kögerler, Christoph Stampfer

Published 2023-04-06Version 1

In this work, we report on the growth of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) crystals from an iron flux at atmospheric pressure and high temperature and demonstrate that (i) the entire sheet of hBN crystals can be detached from the metal in a single step using hydrochloric acid and that (ii) these hBN crystals allow the fabrication of high carrier mobility graphene devices. By combining spatially-resolved confocal Raman spectroscopy and electrical transport measurements, we confirm the excellent quality of these crystals for high-performance hBN-graphene-based van der Waals heterostructures. The full width at half maximum of the graphene Raman 2D peak is as low as 16 cm$^{-1}$, and the room temperature charge carrier mobilitiy is around 80000 cm$^2$/(Vs) at a carrier density 1$\times$10$^{12}$cm$^{-12}$. This is fully comparable with devices of similar dimensions fabricated using crystalline hBN synthesized by the high pressure and high temperature method. Finally, we show that for high quality hBN crystals the hBN Raman peak line width, in contrast to the graphene 2D line width, does not contain any useful information for benchmarking the hBN substrate or encapsulant.