Fabrication of an ideal nanoring from a black phosphorus nanoribbon upon movable bundling carbon nanotubes

Abstract

As a low dimensional material, black phosphorus (BP) continues to attract much attention from researchers due to its excellent electric properties. In particular, the one-dimensional material, in the form of a ring or tube formed from BP, has been extensively studied and found to be a perfect semiconductor. But the BP ring has never been reported in laboratories. To form an ideal ring from a rectangular BP ribbon, we choose a carbon nanotube (CNT) bundle to attract the ribbon and move one or more CNTs in the bundle to induce the unsaturated ends of the BP ribbon to become covalently bonded. Numerical experiments are applied to BP ribbons with lengths either equal to, shorter, or longer than the perimeter of the CNT bundle, to investigate the formation of a BP ring. Experiments show that if one end of the BP ribbon is attracted by a CNT, moving the other CNTs away endows the ribbon with high probability of forming an ideal ring. The conclusions drawn from these results will benefit future in situ experiments involving forming a ring from a BP ribbon.

Thermal expansion producing easier formation of a black phosphorus nanotube from nanoribbon on carbon nanotube

“…When chemical synthesis approaches are difficult to obtain a BP nanotube, physical fabrication methods are worth trying. Cai et al [25][26][27] proposed an approach to obtain a BP nanotube from a rectangular BP ribbon. In their work, a rectangular BP ribbon putting nearby a CNT moves toward and curves upon the CNT under their interaction.…”

Initial Relative Position Influencing Self-Assembly of a Black Phosphorus Ribbon on a CNT

“…Similar to carbon nanotubes (CNTs) being formed from curved graphene ribbon, a BP nanotube [13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26] may also be obtained by curling a single-layer black phosphorus ribbon and bonding the closing neighbour edges. One of the merits of the new phosphorus allotrope is that the tube has fewer unsaturated atoms, which are essential to the thermal and chemical stabilities of the material [27].…”

“…Hence, the physical assembly approach could be worth trying. To obtain a BP nanotube, Cai et al [23,24,25] tested several approaches to produce a nanotube from a rectangular BP ribbon. They [23] found that to form a perfect BP nanotube on a specified CNT, a rectangular BP ribbon with a perfect length is required.…”

“…Otherwise, a BP scroll will be obtained. The other method is to use a CNT bundle to trigger the self-assembly of a rectangular BP ribbon into a nanotube by moving one or more carbon nanotubes [24]. Fullerenes were also adopted to drive the self-assembly of a BP ribbon into a tube [25].…”

Mechanical stability of a nanotube from monolayer black phosphorus with the [110] direction as the tube's circumference or generatrix

“…19 Unfortunately, a BP nanotube (BPNT) has never been discovered to date. Recently, people suggested a potential way to obtain BPNTs in using numerical simulation approaches, [20][21][22][23][24][25] and it is similar to the synthesis of CNTs via tailoring graphene experimentally. 26 For example, an armchair BPNT can be obtained by winding a BP ribbon along the armchair direction on a CNT.…”