Design of nanoscale capacitors based on metallic borophene and insulating boron nitride layers

In alignment with the efforts on miniaturizing the components of electronic devices with enhanced performance, we investigate a dielectric nanocapacitor (DNC) based on metallic borophene electrodes separated with insulating hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) monolayers (n=1–5). The capacitive performance of the proposed DNC as a function of applied electric field (→E) and thickness of the dielectric material is examined by using ab initio methods. The borophene plates and h-BN monolayers are commensurate and coupled only with van der Waals interaction, which constitutes an ideal configuration as a DNC. It is found that a single h-BN layer is not thick enough as a spacer to hinder quantum tunneling effects, and similar to the case with no insulating layer, borophene electrodes are shorted. Being effective from two h-BN layers, the charge separation on borophene plates is attained via →E in the vertical direction. The capacitance of the DNC rapidly saturates at →E≥0.1V/Å and reaches its maximum value of 0.77μF/cm2 for n=2. The capacitance decreases with an increasing number of insulating layers as the distance between electrodes enlarges and shows a similar trend that is expected from the classical Helmholtz model. Our results suggest metallic and lightweight borophene and insulating h-BN monolayers as ideal constituents for the DNC design.