Phosphorene introduced as graphene alternative
Sheets of ultrathin phosphorus could lead to faster semiconductor electronics
By Andrew Grant
DENVER — Phosphorus has joined carbon as the only elements to be separated into sheets each a single atom thick, researchers announced March 7 at a meeting of the American Physical Society. The newly fabricated ultrathin material, dubbed phosphorene, could prove superior to its popular carbon counterpart for use in next-generation electronics.
Graphene, which consists of a flat honeycomb lattice of carbon atoms, has been the darling of materials scientists since 2004. That’s when Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov peeled off sheets of graphite with Scotch tape, a simple step that produced graphene and was rewarded with the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics (SN Online: 10/5/10). Among graphene’s remarkable properties is that it can shuttle electrons rapidly while hardly heating up, which led some scientists to predict that it could replace silicon in computers and other electronics.