The preparation of holey phosphorene by electrochemical assistance

Black phosphorus (BP), an emerging two-dimensional (2D) layered semiconductor material, has been applied to various fields due to its excellent properties such as remarkable in-plane anisotropy, high carrier mobility, and high on-off ratio. It is well known that the properties of BP depend on its structure and morphology, and the nano-BP is usually superior to bulk BP in terms of application and performance. Up to now, the reported nano-BP with different structure and morphology only includes two-dimensional phosphorene and zero-dimensional BP quantum dots. It is very possible to develop nano-BP with a novel structure to improve the performance and expand its application. In this work, a novel phosphorene with a holey structure was prepared by electro-chemical assistance for the first time. The obtained holey phosphorene was characterized by TEM, XPS, Raman, XRD, SEM, AFM and UV-Vis techniques. The relevant results indicate that the thickness of the synthesized holey phosphorene was 1-2 nm (ca. 1-2 layers), and the pore size ranges from a few nanometers to tens of nanometers.