A Novel Mild Phase-Transition to Prepare Black Phosphorus Nanosheets with Excellent Energy Applications

Abstract

Based on the phase transformation of phosphorus and Gibbs free energy theory, a new mild method to fabricate black phosphorus nanosheets from their red phosphorus microsphere counterparts is proposed. Interestingly, the as-prepared black phosphorus nanosheets, as a kind of novel metal-free photocatalyst, exhibit excellent photocatalytic H₂ production performance owing to their intrinsic layered polycrystalline structure. Besides, the nanosheet is also a kind of potential anode material in lithium-ion batteries and shows good electrochemical performance.

Keywords: black phosphorus nanosheets; hydrogen production; lithium-ion batteries; metal-free photocatalysts; mild phase-transition.