# Proximity induced Colossal Conductivity Modulation in Phosphorene

## TL;DR

This study shows that proximity to organic molecules and external factors can induce colossal conductivity changes in phosphorene, enhancing its potential for nanoelectronic applications like sensors and switches.

## Contribution

We demonstrate a robust method to achieve over 1500% conductivity enhancement in phosphorene via molecular adsorption, dopants, and strain, with tunability using gate voltage.

## Key findings

- Conductivity can be increased by over 1500% under certain conditions.
- The semiconducting nature of phosphorene remains unaffected by molecular adsorption.
- The effect is robust against system size, dopant variation, and external strain.

## Abstract

Phosphorene is a promising single elemental two-dimensional layered semiconductor with huge potential for future nanoelectronics and spintronics applications. In this work, we investigated the effect of an organic molecule (benzene) in the close proximity of a Phosphorene nanoribbon. Our extensive calculations reveal that the semiconducting nature of Phosphorene stays unaffected as a result of the molecular adsorption while the transport properties go through drastic changes. Under the influence of dopant atoms and external strain, colossal changes in the conductivity is observed with a maximum enhancement > 1500% which has not been observed earlier. This effect is pretty robust against the (i) variation of system size, (ii) type, location and concentration of dopants and (iii) nature and magnitude of the external strain. Furthermore, we demonstrated how a gate voltage can be used to fine tune the enhanced conductivity response in a Field-effect transistor (FET) structure. Our results provide new direction for Phosphorene based nanoelectronics in applications like sensing, switching where a higher level of conduction can offer better resolution, higher ON/OFF ratio and superior energy efficiency.