What is "nanomesh"

n. A nanoscale mesh

The nanomesh is a new inorganic nanostructured two-dimensional material, similar to graphene. It was discovered in 2003 at the University of Zurich, Switzerland .

It consists of a single layer of boron (B) and nitrogen (N) atoms, which forms by self-assembly a highly regular mesh after high-temperature exposure of a clean rhodium or ruthenium surface to borazine under ultra-high vacuum.

The nanomesh looks like an assembly of hexagonal poresIn the literature different words referring to similar concepts can be found. Below a summary of them:

• Pores, apertures, holes: areas of the nanomesh laying the closest to the underlying substrate due to a strong attraction. They form depressions, which are 0.05 nm deep and have a hexagonal shape.
• Wires: areas of the nanomesh referring to the border of the pores, which lay the farer away to the underlying substrate and therefore represent the upper part of the nanomesh. (see right image) at the nanometer (nm) scale. The distance between 2 pore centers is only of 3.2 nm, whereas each pore has a diameter of about 2 nm and is 0.05 nm deep. The lowest regions bind strongly to the underlying metal, while the wires (highest regions) are only bound to the surface through strong cohesive forces within the layer itself.

The boron nitride nanomesh is not only stable under vacuum, air and some liquids, but also up to temperatures of 796C (1070 K). In addition it shows the extraordinary ability to trap molecules and metallic clusters, which have similar sizes to the nanomesh pores, forming a well-ordered array. These characteristics promise interesting applications of the nanomesh in areas like nanocatalysis, surface functionalisation, spintronics, quantum computing and data storage media like hard drives.