Unzipping of black phosphorus to form zigzag-phosphorene nanobelts

Zhifang Liu, Yilin Sun, Huaqiang Cao (), Dan Xie (), Wei Li, Jiaou Wang and Anthony K. Cheetham ()
Additional contact information
Zhifang Liu: Tsinghua University
Yilin Sun: Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology (BNRist), Tsinghua University
Huaqiang Cao: Tsinghua University
Dan Xie: Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology (BNRist), Tsinghua University
Wei Li: National Institute for Advanced Materials, Nankai University
Jiaou Wang: Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Anthony K. Cheetham: University of Cambridge

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract Phosphorene, monolayer or few-layer black phosphorus, exhibits fascinating anisotropic properties and shows interesting semiconducting behavior. The synthesis of phosphorene nanosheets is still a hot topic, including the shaping of its two-dimensional structure into nanoribbons or nanobelts. Here we report electrochemical unzipping of single crystalline black phosphorus into zigzag-phosphorene nanobelts, as well as nanosheets and quantum dots, via an oxygen-driven mechanism. The experimental results agree well with our theoretical calculations. The calculation for the unzipping mechanism study suggests that interstitial oxygen-pairs are the critical intermediate species for generating zigzag-phosphorene nanobelts. Although phosphorene oxidation has been reported, lengthwise cutting is hitherto unreported. Our discovery of phosphorene cut upon oxidation represents a previously unknown mechanism for the formation of various dimensions of phosphorene nanostructures, especially zigzag-phosphorene nanobelts. It opens up a way for studying the quantum effects and electronic properties of zigzag-phosphorene nanobelts.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17622-6 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-17622-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-17622-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().