ABSTRACT

Two nanostructural types-nanomesh and nanohoneycomb-are practically the same nanoforms, named differently by distinct researchers. Among other (mainly inorganic) compounds, a considerable number of reports are devoted to a BN nanomaterial, which was called nanomesh (we consider it related to nanogrid too) by Corso et al. from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, who published in 2003 in Science the discovery of this inorganic nanostructured 2D material. It consisted of a highly regular mesh of hexagonal boron nitride (BN) with a 3 nm periodicity and a 2 nm hole size and was formed by self-assembly on an Rh(111) single-crystalline surface.1 Two layers of mesh cover the surface uniformly after high-temperature exposure of the clean rhodium surface to borazine (HBNH)3. This unique structure (Figure 21.1) was found2 to be stable under ambient atmosphere (it does not decompose up to temperatures of at least 796°C), which provides an important basis for technological applications like templating and coating. The suggested (12 × 12) periodicity of this reconstruction was unambiguously con£rmed. The nanomesh is a coincidence structure of 13 h-BN units per 12 Rh substrate units, and no major deviations from the in-plane bulk positions occur for the bulk Rh atoms. In addition, the BN nanomesh can serve as a template to organize molecules and clusters. These characteristics promise interesting applications of the nanomesh in areas such as nanocatalysis, surface functionalization, spintronics, quantum computing, and data storage media like hard drives. Among a series of other BN nanomesh investigations, we note the study on the temperature-dependent microscopic structure and the dynamics of adsorbed Xe at different temperatures on single-sheet h-BN on a Rh(111) nanomesh.3 It was shown that the sitespeci£c adsorption arose from two different interactions of similar magnitude with respect to their lateral variations: the £rst can be attributed to a van der Waals type interaction, whereas the second originates from lateral variation of the electrostatic surface potential and is of polarization type. Both types are responsible for stabilizing dynamic and static Xe rings in these pores.