Antimonene-based flexible photodetector

Antimonene-based flexible photodetector†

Qi Xiao,^a Chen-Xia Hu,^a Hao-Ran Wu,^a Yong-Yuan Ren,

^b Xiang-Yang Li,^a Qi-Qi Yang,^a Guan-Hua Dun,^a Zhi-Peng Huang,^a Yong Peng,^c Feng Yan,

^b Qiang Wang

*^a and Hao-Li Zhang

*^ad

Author affiliations

* Corresponding authors

^a State Key Laboratory of Applied Organic Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Special Function Materials and Structure Design, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, P. R. China
E-mail: qiangwang@lzu.edu.cn, haoli.zhang@lzu.edu.cn

^b Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Functional Polymer Design and Application, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou, P. R. China

^c Key Laboratory of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials of MOE, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, P. R. China

^d Tianjin Key Laboratory of Molecular Optoelectronic Sciences, Department of Chemistry, Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemical Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, P. R. China

Abstract

Antimonene is an emerging semiconducting two-dimensional (2D) material with various attractive properties, but its applications in optoelectronics have rarely been explored. Herein, we report a highly efficient preparation of few-layered antimonene by a polymer ionic liquid (PIL) assisted liquid-phase exfoliation method, which gives above 20% yield of micrometer sized nanosheets. Stability studies suggested that the presence of water in the solvent significantly accelerated the decomposition of the produced antimonene, while the antimonene dispersed in dry DMF exhibited a very high stability under ambient conditions. For the first time, flexible photodetectors based on a hybrid structure of few layer antimonene nanosheets modified by PIL and CdS quantum dots (QDs) were fabricated, which showed a good responsivity of 10 μA W⁻¹ and on/off ratio of 26.8 under the bias of 1 V. This work demonstrates that PIL assisted liquid-phase exfoliation is a very promising method to achieve highly efficient preparation, preservation, and surface modification of few-layer antimonene, and hence enable the application of antimonene-based 2D materials in optoelectronics.