Quantitative insights into the growth mechanisms of nanopores in hexagonal boron nitride

The formation of nanopores under electron irradiation is an ideal process to quantify chemical bonds in two-dimensional materials. Nowadays, high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) allows investigating such nucleation and growth phenomena with incomparable spatial and temporal resolution. Moreover, theoretical calculations are usually exploited to confirm characteristic features of these atomic-scale observations. Nevertheless, the full understanding of the ejection mechanisms of atoms requires a detailed investigation of the interplay between the very dynamic edge structure of expanding nanopores and the displacement energy of edge atoms (ED). Here, the dynamics of triangular nanopores in hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) under various electron dose rates was followed by aberration-corrected HRTEM with high temporal resolution to provide new in situ insights into their growth processes. We reveal that the ejection of atomic pairs is an elemental mechanism that considerably speeds up the expansion of nanopores. Atomic-scale calculations were exploited to quantify the structure-dependent ED of all the ejected edge atoms. They revealed strong variations of this threshold energy during the growth processes. This quantitative study reconciles theoretical and experimental measurements of the ejection rate of atoms in h-BN under electron irradiation, which is essential for nanopore engineering in this atomically thin membrane.