Phosphorene discovery positively impacts 2D electronics

US researchers have made phosphorus into an analogue of graphene, dubbed phosphorene, allowing practical electronic devices made from such two-dimensional materials.¹ Peide Ye at Purdue University, US, and his co-workers show that phosphorene is the first native 2D electron-poor – or p-type – semiconductor. That’s important for making these flat materials into standard complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) logic circuit elements, which Ye’s team has also achieved with phosphorene. ‘For device applications it’s fundamentally better than graphene,’ Ye says.