High-mobility transport anisotropy and linear dichroism in few-layer black phosphorus

Two-dimensional crystals are emerging materials for nanoelectronics. Development of the field requires candidate systems with both a high carrier mobility and, in contrast to graphene, a sufficiently large electronic bandgap. Here we present a detailed theoretical investigation of the atomic and electronic structure of few-layer black phosphorus (BP) to predict its electrical and optical properties. This system has a direct bandgap, tunable from 1.51 eV for a monolayer to 0.59 eV for a five-layer sample. We predict that the mobilities are hole-dominated, rather high and highly anisotropic. The monolayer is exceptional in having an extremely high hole mobility (of order 10,000 cm2 V−1 s−1) and anomalous elastic…

• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China

  Awards: 11004244, 11274380
• BN
  Bulgarian National Science Fund
• RU
  Renmin University of China
• PF
  Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University