The emergence of borophene has triggered soaring interest in the investigation of its superior structural anisotropy, a novel photoelectronic property for diverse potential applications. However, the structural instability and need of a metal substrate for depositing borophene restrict its large-scale applications toward high-performance electronic and optoelectric devices. van der Waals epitaxy is regarded as an efficient technique for growing superb two-dimensional materials onto extensive functional substrates, but the preparation of stable and controllable borophene on nonmetallic substrates is still not reported. Here, we demonstrate that borophene films can be synthesized onto a mica substrate by van der Waals epitaxy, where hydrogen and NaBH4 are respectively used as the carrier gas and the boron source. The lattice structure of the as-synthesized borophene coincides with the predicted α′-boron sheet. The borophene-based photodetector shows an excellent photoresponsivity of 1.04 A W–1 and a specific detectivity of 1.27 × 1011 Jones at a reversed bias of 4 V under illumination of a 625 nm light-emitting diode, which are remarkably superior to those of reported boron nanosheets. This work facilitates further studies of borophene toward its attractive properties and applications in novel optoelectronic devices and integrated circuits.

Borophene has been predicted to have outstanding catalytic activity owing to its extreme electron deficiency and abundant active sites. However, no experimental results have been still reported for borophene application in high-efficiency catalysis. Here, a borophene nanosheet was prepared on a carbon cloth surface via chemical vapor deposition. The boron source is sodium borohydride and the carrier gas is hydrogen gas. The crystal structure of the borophene nanosheet highly matches that of a theoretical α′-borophene nanosheet. Borophene shows good electrocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) ability with a 69 mV/dec Tafel slope and good cycling stability in a 0.5 M H2SO4 solution. The enhanced performance is ascribed to an abundant electrocatalytic active area and low resistance of charge transfer, which results from its rich surface active sites. The improvement has been revealed by first-principles calculations, which is originated from their inherent metallicity and abundant electrocatalytic active sites on the nanosheets’ surface. Borophene’s extraordinarily high activity and stability give rise to extensive investigation of the application of borophene in high-efficiency energy applications such as catalysts and batteries.

Flexible and wearable electronic sensing devices play an increasingly important role in human health monitoring and non-contact sensors towards human to machine interface technologies. Humidity sensor has been proved to...

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Borophene, as a rising-star monoelemental 2D material, has motivated great interest because of its novel properties, such as anisotropic plasmonics, high carrier mobility, mechanical compliance, optical transparency, ultrahigh thermal conductance and superconductivity. These properties make it an ideal candidate for use in the field of energy, sensors and information storage. Stimulated by the realization of pioneering experimental works in 2015 and the follow-up synthesis experiments, a series of high-performance borophene-based devices in the fields, including supercapacitors, batteries, hydroelectric generator, humidity sensors, gas sensors, pressure sensors and memories, have been experimentally reported in recent years, which are beneficial to the transition of borophene-based materials from experimental synthesis to practical application. Therefore, in addition to paying attention to the experimental preparation of borophene, significant efforts are needed to promote the advancement of related applications of borophene. In this review, after providing a brief overview of borophene evolution and synthesis, we mainly summarize the applications of borophene-based materials in energy storage, energy conversion, energy harvesting, sensors and information storage. Finally, based on the current research status, some rational suggestions and discussions on the issues and challenges in the future research direction are proposed.

Borophene has been proposed to be an energetic and promising material for electronic, optical, and thermal domains, but these applications have not been still achieved due to the metallic feature and unstable structure. The core–shell structure is a promising candidate to promote borophene for extensive applications because of fabulous multifunctional properties benefitting from the combination of diverse core and shell materials. As a favorite inner core material, Fe3O4 nanoparticles are investigated to enhance the electronic property of the core–shell particles owing to their unique semimetallic nature. Therefore, the combination of borophene and Fe3O4 nanoparticles is expected to develop high-performance electronic and sensing devices. Here, we demonstrate that borophene-functionalized Fe3O4 nanoparticles in large quantities can be prepared by heating the mixture of hydrothermally synthesized and uniform Fe3O4 nanoparticles and sodium borohydride powders under the hydrogen atmosphere as a protective gas. The structure of the shell χ4-borophene with 10 atoms per unit has been verified by combining the first-principles calculations and experimental measurements. Furthermore, a nonvolatile rewritable memory device based on the core–shell nanostructures is fabricated, and the device shows an ultrahigh on/off current ratio of 8.23 × 105 and an ultralow reset operating voltage of around 0.19 V as well as good stability.

Borophene has attracted enormous attention because of its rich and unique structural and electronic properties for promising pratical applications. Although borophene sheets have been realized on different substrates in recent experiments, there are very few reports on the device application of borophene. Recently, borophene can be grown on some functional substrates, which lays a good foundation for its potential applications. Here, we report that hydrogenated borophene can be grown on the fluorine-doped tin oxide glass substrate. The phase of the obtained borophene is well consistent with the predicted semiconducting δ 5-boron sheet. Furthermore, a vertical heterojunction ultraviolet detector based p-borophene/n-zinc oxide was fabricated. The photoresponsivity of the detector is 1.02 × 10−1 A W−1, the specific detection rate was 1.43 × 109 Jones and the response speed was τ res = 2.8 s, τ rec = 3.2 s at the reversed bias of −5 V under the light excitation of 365 nm. This work will lay a foundation for further study on the attractive properties and applications of borophene in new optoelectronic devices and integrated circuits.

Borophene has drawn tremendous attention in the past decade for a wide range of potential applications owing to its unique structural, optical, and electronic properties. However, applications of borophene toward next-generation nanodevices are mostly theoretical predictions, while experimental realization is still lacking due to rapid oxidation of intrinsic borophene in an air environment. Here, we have successfully prepared structurally stable and transferrable few-layer β 12 -borophane on copper foils by a typical two-zone chemical vapor deposition method, where bis(triphenylphosphine)copper tetrahydroborate was used as the boron source in a hydrogen-rich atmosphere to stabilize its structure through hydrogenation. The crystal structure of the as-prepared β 12borophane is in good agreement with previous reports. A fabricated photodetector based on β 12 -borophane−silicon (n-type) Schottky junction shows good photoelectric responses to light excitations in a wide wavelength range from 365 to 850 nm. Especially, the photodetector exhibits a good photoresponsivity of around 0.48 A W −1 , a high specific detectivity of 4.39 × 10 11 jones, a high external quantum efficiency of 162%, and short response and recovery times of 115 and 121 ms under an ultraviolet light with the wavelength of 365 nm at a reverse bias of 5 V. The results show great potential applications of borophane in nextgeneration nanophotonic and nanoelectronic devices.