Opto-electric property relationship in phosphorus embedded nanocarbon

Abstract

Abstract Graphene, due to its zero band gap, has an excellent combination of the important features such as ballistic transport, tensile strength and chemical tuning, which are practically hindered in opto-electric applications. The precursors used in the production of nanocarbon are relatively costlier; however, that their production processes include difficulties is a harder problem. It is possible to control the size, structure and properties of the produced nanocarbon matrix by tuning sp2 domains in the matrix. In this respect, the coal, being a potential candidate for the synthesis of nanocarbon which holds promising applications, has attracted remarkable interest. The nanocarbon structure reported in this paper was synthesized from bituminous coal and then phosphorus atoms were added into the produced structure in order to obtain resultant composite structure, whose structural properties were illustrated here in detail by using the X-ray, IR and UV–Visible spectroscopy techniques. A systematical analysis of the optical and electrical properties of the produced composite has revealed that a composite structure to be produced in the ratio 1:2 of nanocarbon + phosphorus has better optical and electrical properties. We report here that the composite produced in this study from nanocarbon by adding phosphorous atoms shows unique photoluminescent property in particular due to the dominance of quantum confinement and oxygen functionalities. The observed increase in the dielectric strength, which results from interfacial polarization and its frequency independent nature, is desirable for the fields such as supercapacitor, sensor, stealth applications etc.