Phosphorene, a new two dimensional platform for advanced materials

Two dimensional materials are still an unexplored territory. Graphene is one of the principal platform on which material scientists have only recently started to play.[1] On the other side, it was estimated that a few hundreds of layered materials could be exfoliated to give a 2D crystal, allowing a large growing opportunity of research. Only small amounts of single and few layers sheets of Phosphorene, the all-P counterpart of graphene, have been prepared by exfoliation of black phosphorus, the most stable and least reactive of the allotropic forms of phosphorus, either by micromechanical cleavage (Scotch tape method) or liquid exfoliation.[2] A phosphorene sheet has the same honeycomb hexagonal network of graphene but it is corrugated having the P atoms an sp3 hybridization. Phosphorene is a natural semiconductor, and the band gap can be controlled by changing the number of stacked layers. This makes the materials very promising for a wide variety of electronic applications. On the other hand, almost nothing is known about the reactivity and the physico-chemical properties of this new fascinating material, and only sparse theoretical [3] and experimental [4] studies have been reported so far. In this communication, we present our results on the synthesis of phosphorene. We will describe its adsorption properties towards different gaseous molecules, such as CO2, CO, O2 and H2 and its functionalization using metallic fragments or metal nanoparticles. Acknowledgement: Thanks are expressed to EC for funding the project PHOSFUN "Phosphorene functionalization: a new platform for advanced multifunctional materials" (ERC ADVANCED GRANT 2015 - 2019) References: [1] K.S. Novoselov, A.K. Geim, S.V. Morozov, D. Jiang, Y. Zhang, S.V. Dubonos, I.V. Grigorieva, A.A. Firsov, Science 2004, 306, 666 - 669. [2] (a) H. Liu, A.T. Neal, Z. Zhu, D. Tomanek, P.D. Ye, arXiv:1401.4133v1 [cond-mat.mes-hall]; (b) L. Li, Y. Yu, G.J. Ye, Q. Ge, X. Ou, H. Wu, D. Feng, X.H. Chen, Y. Zhang, arXiv:1401.4117v1 [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]; (c) J.R. Brent, N. Savjani, E.A. Lewis, S. J. Haigh, D. J. Lewis, P. O'Brien, Chem. Commun. 2014, 50, 13338-13341. [3] (a) L. Kou, T. Frauenheim, C. Chen, J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2014, 5, 2675-2681; (b) V.V. Kulish, O.I. Malyi, C. Persson, P. Wu, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2015, 17, 992-1000. [4] J.D. Wood, S.A. Wells, D. Jariwala, K.-S. Chen, E. Cho, V.K. Sangwan, X. Liu, L.J. Lauhon, T.J. Marks, M.C. Hersam, Nano Lett. 2014, 14, 6964-6970.