Photonic devices based on black phosphorus and related hybrid materials

Artificial semiconductor heterostructures played a pivotal role in modern electronic and photonic technologies, providing a highly effective means for the manipulation and control of carriers, from the visible to the far-infrared, leading to the development of highly efficient devices like sources, detectors and modulators. The discovery of graphene and the related fascinating capabilities have triggered an unprecedented interest in devices based on inorganic two-dimensional (2D) materials. Amongst them, black phosphorus (BP) recently showed an extraordinary potential in a variety of applications across micro-electronics and photonics. With an energy gap between the gapless graphene and the larger gap transition metal dichalcogenides, BP can form the basis for a new generation of high-performance photonic devices that could be specifically engineered to comply with different applications, like transparent saturable absorbers, fast photocounductive switches and low noise photodetectors, exploiting its peculiar electrical, thermal and optical anisotropy. This paper will review the latest achievements in black-phosphorus-based THz photonics and discuss future perspectives of this rapidly developing research field.