Synthesis, Exfoliation, and Transport Properties of Quasi-1D van der Waals Fibrous Red Phosphorus

Quasi-one-dimensional (quasi-1D) fibrous red phosphorus (RP) has triggered growing interest recently for its unique properties and promising applications in energy storage, sensing, and heterogeneous catalysis. However, attempts to explore its anisotropy and transport properties have progressed slowly. In this work, we report the fabrication of large-size and pure bulk fibrous RP crystals using a chemical vapor transport reaction by modifying growth kinetics. For the first time, the weak layer number-dependent anisotropic electronic structure of fibrous RP is revealed based on theoretical calculations. The b-axis-aligned fibrous RP nanoribbons with a high aspect ratio exceeding 1000 are easily prepared by facile liquid exfoliation. Impressively, the field-effect transistor device built with fibrous RP nanoribbons exhibits p-type transport behavior and a high mobility reaching 236.7 cm2 V–1 s–1 with an On/Off ratio approaching 1.6 × 103, which are superior to those of other reported RP-based materials in general. The results demonstrate the great potential of fibrous RP as a promising channel material and lay a solid foundation to further study the intrinsic properties of quasi-1D van der Waals materials.