Black phosphorus nanostructures (nano-BPs) include BP nanosheets, BP quantum dots, and BP nanoparticles. Since first being discovered in 2014, nano-BP has become one of the most popular nanomaterials. Nano-BP has many unique properties, such as excellent surface activity, tunable bandgap, high carrier mobility, moderate on/off ratio, excellent biocompatibility, good biodegradation, etc., all of which make nano-BP particularly attractive in biomedicine and biosensing. This review article comprehensively summarizes recent advances in synthesis, functionalization, biomedicine, and biosensing applications of nano-BP. Different methods are first introduced, such as mechanical cleavage, liquid-phase ultrasonic exfoliation, electrochemical exfoliation, solvothermal treatment, and acoustic-microfluidic stripping, for making the nano-BP. Then two strategies are emphasized to enhance ambient stability of nano-BP, namely physical encapsulation and chemical modification. Next, how to develop nano-BP as advanced imaging agents, nanocarriers, and nanomedicine for bioimaging (fluorescence imaging, thermal imaging, and photoacoustic imaging) and disease treatment (phototherapy and photo/chemical/immune synergistic therapy) is demonstrated. The biosensing applications on nano-BP is introduced, including electrochemical biosensor, fluorescence biosensor, chemiluminescence biosensor, electrogenerated chemiluminescence biosensor, and colorimetric biosensor. Finally, the current challenges and future perspectives on nano-BP in bioapplications are discussed.
Nano-BP SynthesisLayered nanomaterials are usually exfoliated from bulk crystals. [35] Compared with bulk materials, monolayer or fewlayer nanomaterials possess the enhanced surface area, excellent physiochemical activity and optoelectronic property. The exfoliation from bulk crystal to monolayer or few-layer nanosheets has been widely applied for preparing almost all the 2D nanomaterials, graphene, MoS 2 , MXene nanosheets, etc. [36] Bulk BP, similar to graphite, is the stacking of layered BP nanosheets via the weak van der Waals force. The destruction of the external driving forces to the weak van der Waals interaction between the stack layers greatly contributes to the exfoliation of nano-BP from the bulk counterparts. Mechanical exfoliation and liquid phase ultrasonic exfoliation are the two most popular approaches, and some other methods were also involved, electrochemical exfoliation and solvothermal treatment, for instance. Table 1 summarizes the advantages and limitations of different exfoliation methods.
Mechanical ExfoliationMechanical exfoliation, also called scotch-tape delamination, mainly utilizes the larger binding energy between the substrate and layered materials than van der Waals forces in Figure 2. a) Schematic illustration of meta-assisted mechanical exfoliation for FLBP. b) The left is FLBPs exfoliated using the normal scotch-tape microcleavage, and the right is FLBP exfoliated using Au-assisted method, and c) the total area of FLBP on 10 different samples. ...