Unlike the unstable black phosphorous, another two-dimensional group-VA material, antimonene, was recently predicted to exhibit good stability and remarkable physical properties. However, the synthesis of high-quality monolayer or few-layer antimonenes, sparsely reported, has greatly hindered the development of this new field. Here, we report the van der Waals epitaxy growth of few-layer antimonene monocrystalline polygons, their atomical microstructure and stability in ambient condition. The high-quality, few-layer antimonene monocrystalline polygons can be synthesized on various substrates, including flexible ones, via van der Waals epitaxy growth. Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy reveal that the obtained antimonene polygons have buckled rhombohedral atomic structure, consistent with the theoretically predicted most stable β-phase allotrope. The very high stability of antimonenes was observed after aging in air for 30 days. First-principle and molecular dynamics simulation results confirmed that compared with phosphorene, antimonene is less likely to be oxidized and possesses higher thermodynamic stability in oxygen atmosphere at room temperature. Moreover, antimonene polygons show high electrical conductivity up to 104 S m−1 and good optical transparency in the visible light range, promising in transparent conductive electrode applications.

Intrinsically high mobility and large absorption coefficient endow inorganic halide perovskites (IHPs) with great promise for high-performance photodetectors (PDs), which, however, are being hindered by the low carrier extraction and transport efficiency of the solution assembled films. Here, we report on a general strategy to enhance the perovskite film conductivity that carbon nanotubes (CNTs) conductive nanonets are constructed from to provide fast carrier tracks. Resultantly, the CsPbBr nanosheet/CNT composite films exhibit both high light harvesting and high conductivity, such advantages are demonstrated by the high performances of corresponding planar PDs. Specifically, the highest external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 7488% and the highest responsivity of 31.1 A W under a bias of 10 V among IHP PDs with planar structure are achieved, which are almost 125-fold over the previous best results. Besides, the efficient charge extraction and transport also remarkably contribute to the fast response speed where a rise time of 16 μs is achieved, which is also superior to state-of-the-art IHP PDs. Furthermore, the composite films exhibit impressive flexibility due to the ultrathin 2D and 1D structural characteristic of perovskites and CNTs. By deploying the PD as a point-like detector, we acquire clear images. The results indicate the promising potentials of the perovskite/CNT composites for solution and ambient condition processed flexible devices, and this strategy is general for all kinds of perovskite optoelectronic devices including photodetectors, phototransistors, and even LEDs.

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are promising candidates for flexible optoelectronic devices because of their special structures and excellent properties, but the low optical absorption of the ultrathin layers greatly limits the generation of photocarriers and restricts the performance. Here, we integrate all-inorganic perovskite CsPbBr nanosheets with MoS atomic layers and take the advantage of the large absorption coefficient and high quantum efficiency of the perovskites, to achieve excellent performance of the TMD-based photodetectors. Significantly, the interfacial charge transfer from the CsPbBr to the MoS layer has been evidenced by the observed photoluminescence quenching and shortened decay time of the hybrid MoS/CsPbBr. Resultantly, such a hybrid MoS/CsPbBr photodetector exhibits a high photoresponsivity of 4.4 A/W, an external quantum efficiency of 302%, and a detectivity of 2.5 × 10 Jones because of the high efficient photoexcited carrier separation at the interface of MoS and CsPbBr. The photoresponsivity of this hybrid device presents an improvement of 3 orders of magnitude compared with that of a MoS device without CsPbBr. The response time of the device is also shortened from 65.2 to 0.72 ms after coupling with MoS layers. The combination of the all-inorganic perovskite layer with high photon absorption and the carrier transport TMD layer may pave the way for novel high-performance optoelectronic devices.

Highly stable antimonene, as the cousin of phosphorene from group-VA, has opened up exciting realms in the two-dimensional (2D) materials family. However, pristine antimonene is an indirect band gap semiconductor, which greatly restricts its applications for optoelectronics devices. Identifying suitable materials, both responsive to incident photons and efficient for carrier transfer, is urgently needed for ultrathin devices. Herein, by means of first-principles computations we found that it is rather feasible to realize a new class of 2D materials with a direct bandgap and high carrier mobility, namely antimonene oxides with different content of oxygen. Moreover, these tunable direct bandgaps cover a wide range from 0 to 2.28 eV, which are crucial for solar cell and photodetector applications. Especially, the antimonene oxide (18Sb-18O) is a 2D topological insulator with a sizable global bandgap of 177 meV, which has a nontrivial Z topological invariant in the bulk and the topological states on the edge. Our findings not only introduce new vitality into 2D group-VA materials family and enrich available candidate materials in this field but also highlight the potential of these 2D semiconductors as appealing ultrathin materials for future flexible electronics and optoelectronics devices.