Stable functionalized phosphorenes and phosphorene heterostructures, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2019, 7, 6631-6637. (DOI: 10.1039/C8TA08497A) & ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, 2019, 11, 27780-27787. (DOI: 10.1021/acsami.9b06910)

The phosphorene is a 2D puckered sheet composed of sp 3 phosphorus with each P atom is covalently bonded to three P atoms in the plane. The P atoms contain lone-pair electrons (LPEs) which have both disadvantage and advantage. The disadvantage is that LPEs make phosphorene reactive to ambient oxygen and water, leading to it's decomposition. The advantage of LPEs is that they can be utilized for chemical functionalization of phosphorene, making it ambient stable without significantly affecting its intrinsic properties.

We developed a novel strategy for phosphorene functionalization with indium(III) chloride, tris(pentafluorophenyl) borane and a benzyl group. The functionalized phosphorenes show stability under ambient conditions as well as good dispersibility in water and superior HER activity . Phosphorene has been further functionalized and covalently cross-linked with transition metal dichalogenides (MoS 2 and MoSe 2). The phosphorene-MoS 2 and

phosphorene-MoSe 2 nanocomposites are much

superior photocatalytic and electrochemical HER activity due to to increased interfacial area and charge-transfer interaction between the hetero-layers.