Phosphorene
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Phosphorene is a two-dimensional material consisting of phosphorus. It consists of a single layer of black phosphorus, the most stable allotrope of phosphorus. Phosphorene is analogous to graphene. Among two-dimensional materials, phosphorene is a competitor to graphene because it has a nonzero fundamental band gap that can be modulated by strain and the number of layers in a stack. Phosphorene was first isolated in 2014 by mechanical exfoliation. Liquid exfoliation is a promising method for scalable phosphorene production.
Top-view electron micrograph of phosphorene
AFM images of few-layer phosphorene sheets produced by ultrasonic exfoliation of black phosphorus in N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone and spin-coated onto a SiO2/Si substrate.
Single-layer materials
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In materials science, the term single-layer materials or 2D materials refers to crystalline solids consisting of a single layer of atoms. These materials are promising for some applications but remain the focus of research. Single-layer materials derived from single elements generally carry the -ene suffix in their names, e.g. graphene. Single-layer materials that are compounds of two or more elements have -ane or -ide suffixes. 2D materials can generally be categorized as either 2D allotropes of various elements or as compounds.
Graphene is an atomic-scale honeycomb lattice of carbon atoms.
STM image of the first (4×4) and second layers (√3×√3-β) of silicene grown on a thin silver film. Image size 16×16 nm.
Lattice image of stanene flake, with the middle inset showing a large-area electron micrograph of the sample. The right inset is an electron diffraction pattern confirming the hexagonal structure.
3D AFM topography image of multilayered palladium nanosheet.