Ultra-Narrow Phosphorene Nanoribbons Produced by Facile Electrochemical Process

Phosphorene nanoribbons (PNRs) have inspired strong research interests to explore their exciting properties that are associated with the unique two-dimensional (2D) structure of phosphorene as well as the additional quantum confinement of the nanoribbon morphology, providing new materials strategy for electronic and optoelectronic applications. Despite several important properties of PNRs, the production of these structures with narrow widths is still a great challenge. Here, a facile and straightforward approach to synthesize PNRs via an electrochemical process that utilize the anisotropic Na⁺ diffusion barrier in black phosphorus (BP) along the [001] zigzag direction against the [100] armchair direction, is reported. The produced PNRs display widths of good uniformity (10.3 ± 3.8 nm) observed by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, and the suppressed B_2g vibrational mode from Raman spectroscopy results. More interestingly, when used in field-effect transistors, synthesized bundles exhibit the n-type behavior, which is dramatically different from bulk BP flakes which are p-type. This work provides insights into a new synthesis approach of PNRs with confined widths, paving the way toward the development of phosphorene and other highly anisotropic nanoribbon materials for high-quality electronic applications.