Phosphorene Nanosheets Exfoliated from Low-Cost and High-Quality Black Phosphorus for Hydrogen Evolution

Abstract

Black phosphorus (BP) has recently attracted intense research interest due to its unique thickness-dependent and anisotropic electronic and photonic properties, and has shown promising potential in nanophotonic, nanoelectronics and energy storage applications. However, the application of BP in practical devices is hindered by its high commercial cost. To further reduce the cost and accelerate the development of BP, a highly efficient preparation strategy for low-cost BP must be found. Herein, we report such a method via a modified chemical vapor transport (CVT) method by replacing high-purity red phosphorus (RP) with a low-purity precursor counterpart. We show that this method can drastically reduce the cost of manufacturing by several orders of magnitude. Furthermore, the BP produced using low-cost RP shows nearly the same crystal quality, high purity, local chemical structure, and electronic properties, compared with those of the high-cost BP prepared by the traditional CVT method. Most importantly, exfoliated phosphorene nanosheets prepared from the low-cost BP exhibit promising hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activity. Owing to the high quality and high conversion efficiency, the low-cost BP holds promising potential in future scientific research and industrial applications.

Enhancing the Surface Reactivity of Black Phosphorus on Hydrogen Evolution by Covalent Chemistry

“…In particular, it has been demonstrated that the electron-donating (-withdrawing) abilities and the coverage of functional groups are critical in affecting the surface HER reactivity of 2D materials such as metallic 1T′ phase of MoS 2 . , Naturally, an interesting question arises: how would the covalent functionalization affect the catalytic activity of BP? The BP-based nanomaterials have been recently revealed to have good catalytic potential for hydrogen evolution. − Yet the basal plane is limited by the weak hydrogen binding ability, and the active sites of BP mainly localize at the defect or edge sites . In order for BP to be catalytically useful, not only the stability but also the surface activity of the basal plane need to be improved.…”

Hydrogen storage on flat land materials, opportunities, and challenges: A review study

“…Black phosphorous has some unique properties such as thickness dependent and anisotropic characteristic, which make it different from other 2D materials. [69][70][71][72] Black phosphorus exhibits tunable band gap, which approximately equals to the 0.3 eV in multilayer structure and 2.0 eV in single-layered structure and charge carrier mobility up to 1,000 cm 2 v À1 s À1. [72,73] Furthermore, BP has several advantages over graphene, h-BN, and TMDs due to in plane anisotropic, optical, and thermal, phonon, and electrical properties.…”

“…Several methods are investigated to reduce its cost. Weihan li et al [ 69 ] found an efficient method for the preparation of low cost BP. It is reported that modified chemical vapor transport method can drastically reduce the cost of BP and can be synthesized for the large‐scale application.…”

First-principles study on the structural properties of 2D MXene SnSiGeN4and its electronic properties under the effects of strain and an external electric field

“…11 Therefore, more and more 2D materials have been experimentally realized, including silicene, phosphorene, germanene, stanene, borophene, antimonene, arsenene, tellurene, selenene, bismuthene, aluminene, and gallenene. [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] In addition, transition metal chalcogenides (TMDs) are also very popular 2D materials consisting of transition metal elements and chalcogens. Monolayer TMDs are usually characterized as having strong spin-orbit coupling effects leading to a spin-valley phenomenon that, in combination with the buckled hexagonal structure, results in an enhancement of the quantum spin/anomalous Hall effects.…”