The desire for smaller and smaller electronic components and quest for flexible electronics has got researchers working round the clock to find a worthy replacement of silicon which is not only good at doing everything that silicon does for us, but is also capable of taking the electronics race to the next phase.
Graphene took the world by storm in 2010 for its unique properties; however, though the wonder material is promising there are very few practical implementations of graphene in electronics. Further, it has metal like properties, which though are desirable don’t really do the job of a semiconductor.
That’s where the black phosphorus comes into the picture. Like graphene, which consists of a single layer of carbon atoms, it forms extremely thin layers. The array of possible applications ranges from transistors and sensors to mechanically flexible semiconductor devices. Unlike graphene, whose electronic properties are similar to those of metals, black arsenic phosphorus behaves like a semiconductor.
Chemists at the Technische Universität München (TUM) have now developed a semiconducting material in which individual phosphorus atoms are replaced by arsenic. In a collaborative international effort, American colleagues have built the first field-effect transistors from the new material as well.
Phosphorene vs. graphene battle begins
A cooperation between the Technical University of Munich and the University of Regensburg on the German side and the University of Southern California (USC) and Yale University in the United States has now, for the first time, produced a field effect transistor made of black arsenic phosphorus.
The compounds were synthesized by Marianne Koepf at the laboratory of the research group for Synthesis and Characterization of Innovative Materials at the TUM. The field effect transistors were built and characterized by a group headed by Professor Zhou and Dr. Liu at the Department of Electrical Engineering at USC.
The new technology developed at TUM allows the synthesis of black arsenic phosphorus without high pressure. This requires less energy and is cheaper. The gap between valence and conduction bands can be precisely controlled by adjusting the arsenic concentration.
“This allows us to produce materials with previously unattainable electronic and optical properties in an energy window that was hitherto inaccessible,” says Professor Tom Nilges, head of the research group for Synthesis and Characterization of Innovative Materials.
Detectors for infrared
With an arsenic concentration of 83 percent the material exhibits an extremely small band gap of only 0.15 electron volts, making it predestined for sensors which can detect long wavelength infrared radiation. LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) sensors operate in this wavelength range, for example. They are used, among other things, as distance sensors in automobiles. Another application is the measurement of dust particles and trace gases in environmental monitoring.
A further interesting aspect of these new, two-dimensional semiconductors is their anisotropic electronic and optical behavior. The material exhibits different characteristics along the x- and y-axes in the same plane. To produce graphene like films the material can be peeled off in ultra thin layers. The thinnest films obtained so far are only two atomic layers thick.
This battle reminds me of that old classic, the screwdriver vs the hammer.