DTU team protects graphene with hBN for future electronics

Graphene Flagship researchers at DTU, Denmark, solved the problem of graphene’s accumulation of defects and impurities due to environmental exposure by protecting it with insulating layers of hexagonal boron nitride, another two-dimensional material with insulating properties.

Peter Bøggild, researcher at Graphene Flagship partner DTU and coauthor of the paper, explains that although ‘graphene is a fantastic material that could play a crucial role in making new nano-sized electronics, it is still extremely difficult to control its electrical properties.’ Since 2010, scientists at DTU have tried to tailor the electrical properties of graphene, by making a very fine pattern of holes, so that channels through which an electric power can flow freely are formed. ‘Creating nanostructured graphene turned out to be amazingly difficult, since even small errors wash out all the properties we designed it to have,’ comments Bøggild.