Abstract:
From sending a rocket to space to our daily life usage, technology is everywhere.
It is needless to say that we live in an age driven by technology. The demands
posed by technological applications drive the search for new materials with novel
properties. For example, the need for a material that shows high carrier mobility
like graphene (an allotrope of carbon consisting of a single layer of atoms arranged
in a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice), but simultaneously offers a sizeable band
gap for applications in the semiconductor industry, has provided the motivation for
the synthesis of black phosphorene (a single layer of black phosphorus, the most
stable allotrope of phosphorus). 1;2
The success of graphene has accelerated the search for new two dimensional
(2D) materials. This has led to the discovery of other new 2D materials such as
germanene (a single layer of germanium atoms), 3 phosphorene, 1;4 hexagonal boron
nitride (boron and nitrogen atoms arranged in a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice
like graphene), 5 and van der Waals stacked heterostructures. 6;7
