Unexpected Persistent Production of Reactive Oxygen Species during the Degradation of Black Phosphorous in the Darkness

Few-layer black phosphorus (FLBP) is easily degraded under ambient condition which is an important barrier that plagues the application of FLBP, but its degradation mechanism is not yet well understood. In this work, we surprisingly found the persistent reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation was involved with FLBP degradation process even in the dark, and ROS generation patterns and mechanism was revealed by chemiluminescence (CL) and density functional theory (DFT) . Meanwhile, rhodamine B (RhB) and methyl orange (MO) can also be removed by FLBP under dark conditions, which further evidence the ROS generation during FLBP self-degradation. This work provides new insights into FLBP self-degradation mechanism and opens opportunities to practically implement FLBP for green catalytic application.

Published in: "Angewandte Chemie International Edition".