Abstract
The greatest challenge regarding black phosphorus (BP) comes as a result of its fast degradation when exposed to ambient conditions, which has overshadowed its applications. Herein, we report a simple and efficient route towards overcoming BP deterioration by preparing a nanocomposite with the conducting polymer polyaniline (PANI). The liquid/liquid interfacial method was employed to produce transparent, freestanding and transferable thin film of BP covered by PANI, with high stability under ambient atmosphere, up to 60 days. Otherwise, the uncapped exfoliated neat BP degraded in solely 3 days under the same conditions. Characterization data show that PANI covers efficiently the BP flakes, indicating favorable interactions between the components. The results presented here can be considered a breakthrough for employing BP as thin film in different technological applications, considering the properties of BP itself or taking advantage of synergistically combining the properties of both components.
Highlights
The greatest challenge regarding black phosphorus (BP) comes as a result of its fast degradation when exposed to ambient conditions, which has overshadowed its applications
In order to validate the production of exfoliated BP, morphological and spectroscopic techniques were employed for its characterization, which were performed right after the sample preparation, and are given in the Supplementary Information (SI)
We demonstrated that the L/L interfacial methodology is a versatile, cheap and simple way of preparing homogeneous and stable thin films of BP with PANI nanocomposite, not reported for phosphorus-based materials before
Summary
The greatest challenge regarding black phosphorus (BP) comes as a result of its fast degradation when exposed to ambient conditions, which has overshadowed its applications. Two effective ways have been employed for this purpose: (i) solvent exfoliation[10, 11], which results in a solvation shell that protects BP surface against the approach of oxidative species and (ii) passivation through encapsulation with other materials, such as graphene[12], boron nitride[13], aluminum oxide layers[8] and polymers (e.g. poly(methyl methacrylate))[14] These methods are well accepted as alternatives to stabilize BP, they have some drawbacks concerning large scale production, high costs and lack of flexibility in processing and depositing the resulting material. To the best of our knowledge, there are no such systematic works assessing the stability of BP incorporated into polymeric matrices[14, 20] just as there are no descriptions regarding the synthesis, processing and characterization of a BP/PANI thin film nanocomposite
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