Phosphorene

Phosphorene is a two-dimensional single-layer material consisting of a phosphorus allotrope – black phosphorus. It is a natural semiconductor where electron flow can be switched “on” and “off” due to a non-zero fundamental band gap. Its two-dimensional structure makes it conceptually similar to the carbon-based graphene, hence the name phosphorene. Phosphorene is predicted to be a strong competitor to graphene because of phosphorene’s semiconducting properties absent in graphene, and with silicene (also a semiconductor) as silicene tends to self-destruct upon peeling layers of it off while phosphorene does not. Phosphorene was first isolated in 2014 by mechanical exfoliation.