Robust 2D Room-Temperature Dilute Ferrimagnetism Enhancement in Freestanding Ammoniated Atom-Thin [0001] h-BN Nanoplates

The author reports an anthracene vapor-assisted transport growth (∼4.8% in yield) of freestanding atomically thin pristine two-dimensional (2D) hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) nanoplates directly from bulk powders. A room-temperature dilute magnetism was first observed in the pyrolytic 2D [0001] h-BN nanoplates, which is attributed to the missing N atom numbers (NN) or existence of a nitrogen-vacancy (Nv) with volume fraction ∼1.46%. Upon the postannealing in ammonia, the unsupported ammoniated 2D h-BN nanoplates showed an enhanced robust ferrimagnetism with the effective magnetic moment as high as 0.024 μB/per N, and Néel temperature at 174.9 K. At 295 K, a symmetric electron paramagnetic resonance peak signal was experimentally measured at g ∼ 2.1267, revealing the presence of an unpaired electron trapped at a B atom site in B-rich h-BN. As a promising 2D dilute magnetic semiconductor candidate, our finding favors the ammoniated atom-thin h-BN nanoplate for realization of spintronic nanodevices operating at room temperature.