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Optoelectronics

Black phosphorus nanoribbons for future integrated circuits

Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering volume 2, page 659 (2025)Cite this article

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New materials that offer suitable bandgaps and high carrier mobility at reduced dimensions have been in high demand given the recent interest in miniaturizing field-effect transistors (FETs) in the post-Moore era. Black phosphorus nanoribbons (BPNRs), with tunable bandgaps and unique electronic and optical properties, are strong contenders for logic devices. They outperform their two-dimensional (2D) counterpart, 2D black phosphorus (BP), which remains highly challenging to synthesize in a large-area, few-layer form that is suitable for logic applications.

Using these BPNRs, the team demonstrate a gold (Au)-contacted BPNR-FET fabricated with a 13-nm-wide and 10-nm-thick BPNR channel, as well as an alternative FET with graphene as the source–drain contact. The graphene-contacted BPNR-FET demonstrates record-high comprehensive performance, with an on/off ratio of 1.7 × 106, mobility of 1,506 cm2 V−1 s−1 and an on-state channel conductivity of 1,845 µS, substantially outperforming the Au-contacted FET with the same BPNR dimensions, as well as all previously reported counterparts.

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Original article

  • Zhang, T. et al. High-quality narrow black phosphorus nanoribbons with nearly atomically smooth edges and well-defined edge orientation. Nat. Mater. 24, 1375–1386 (2025)

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  1. Nature Reviews Electrical Engineering https://www.nature.com/natrevelectreng/

    Rachel Won

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  1. Rachel Won
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Correspondence to Rachel Won.

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Won, R. Black phosphorus nanoribbons for future integrated circuits. Nat Rev Electr Eng 2, 659 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44287-025-00221-2

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