Molecular adsorption on surfaces is a key element for many applications, including sensing and catalysis. Non-invasive sugar sensing has been an active area of research due to its importance to diabetes care. The adsorption of sugars on a template surface study is at the heart of matter. Here, we study doped hexagonal boron nitride sheets (h-BNNs) as adsorbing and sensing template for glucose and glucosamine. Using first principles calculations, we find that the adsorption of glucose and glucosamine on h-BNNs is significantly enhanced by the substitutional doping of the sheet with Al and Ga. Including long range van der Waals corrections gives adsorption energies of about 2 eV. In addition to the charge transfer occurring between glucose and the Al/Ga-doped BN sheets, the adsorption alters the size of the band gap, allowing for optical detection of adsorption. We also find that Al-doped boron nitride sheet is better than Ga-nitride sheet to enhance the adsorption energy of glucose and glucosamine. The results of our work can be potentially utilized when designing support templates for glucose and glucosamine.
@article{arxiv.1512.04111,
title = {Adsorption of Sugars on Al- and Ga-doped Boron Nitride Surfaces: A Computational Study},
author = {Ahmed A. Darwish and Mohamed M. Fadlallah and Ashraf Badawi and Ahmed A. Maarouf},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1512.04111},
year = {2016}
}