Fabrication and Imaging of Monolayer Phosphorene with Preferred Edge Configurations via Graphene-Assisted Layer-by-Layer Thinning

Abstract

Phosphorene, a monolayer of black phosphorus (BP), is an elemental two-dimensional material with interesting physical properties, such as high charge carrier mobility and exotic anisotropic in-plane properties. To fundamentally understand these various physical properties, it is critically important to conduct an atomic-scale structural investigation of phosphorene, particularly regarding various defects and preferred edge configurations. However, it has been challenging to investigate mono- and few-layer phosphorene because of technical difficulties arising in the preparation of a high-quality sample and damages induced during the characterization process. Here, we successfully fabricate high-quality monolayer phosphorene using a controlled thinning process with transmission electron microscopy, and subsequently perform atomic-resolution imaging. Graphene protection suppresses the e-beam-induced damage to multi-layer BP and one-side graphene protection facilitates the layer-by-layer thinning of the samples, rendering high-quality monolayer and bilayer regions. We also observe the formation of atomic-scale crystalline edges predominantly aligned along the zigzag and (101) terminations, which is originated from edge kinetics under e-beam-induced sputtering process. Our study demonstrates a new method to image and precisely manipulate the thickness and edge configurations of air-sensitive two-dimensional materials.

arXiv comment21 pages, 5 figures

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Edge and sublayer degrees of freedom for phosphorene nanoribbons with twofold-degenerate edge bands via electric field
• Single-Crystalline Metallic Films Induced by van der Waals Epitaxy on Black Phosphorus
• Bloch dynamics in inversion symmetry broken monolayer phosphorene
• Magnetic ratchet effect in phosphorene
• Energetically Favored One-Dimensional Moiré Superstructure in the Pseudo-Square Lattice GdTe3