A research team at the University of Vienna led by physicist Jani Kotakoski demonstrates how the shape of nanopores in hexagonal boron nitride—the electrically insulating counterpart to graphene, also known as "white graphene"—can be precisely controlled at the atomic level.
Electron irradiation in ultra-high vacuum creates circular pores, while adding small amounts of oxygen yields triangular pores. The nanopore engineering presented in the journal Nature Communications thus unlocks new applications in filtration, DNA sequencing, catalysis, and quantum technologies.
Two-dimensional hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) is an insulating material that consists of a single layer of atoms. It forms a stable barrier that can also be used to protect other two-dimensional materials, such as graphene, from their environment. Creating pores only a few atoms across makes this barrier permeable, resulting in a nanoporous membrane through which molecules or ions can pass.
Such membranes could be used to filter substances or analyze DNA as it passes through a nanopore. At this scale, the pore's precise shape and the atoms lining its edges influence how it interacts with passing molecules. At the same time, due to their small size, the pores have quantum mechanical properties that make them useful for catalysis and quantum applications.
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