Black phosphorus (BP) has drawn great attention owing to its tunable band gap depending on thickness, high mobility, and large Ion/ Ioff ratio, which makes BP attractive for using in… Click to show full abstract
Black phosphorus (BP) has drawn great attention owing to its tunable band gap depending on thickness, high mobility, and large Ion/ Ioff ratio, which makes BP attractive for using in future two-dimensional electronic and optoelectronic devices. However, its instability under ambient conditions poses challenge to the research and limits its practical applications. In this work, we present a feasible approach to suppress the degradation of BP by sulfur (S) doping. The fabricated S-doped BP few-layer field-effect transistors (FETs) show more stable transistor performance under ambient conditions. After exposing to air for 21 days, the charge-carrier mobility of a representative S-doped BP FETs device decreases from 607 to 470 cm2 V-1 s-1 (remained as high as 77.4%) under ambient conditions and a large Ion/ Ioff ratio of ∼103 is still retained. The atomic force microscopy analysis, including surface morphology, thickness, and roughness, also indicates the lower degradation rate of S-doped BP compared to BP. First-principles calculations show that the dopant S atom energetically prefers to chemisorb on the BP surface in a dangling form and the enhanced stability of S-doped BP can be ascribed to the downshift of the conduction band minimum of BP below the redox potential of O2/O2-. Our work suggests that S doping is an effective way to enhance the stability of black phosphorus.
               
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