Black Phosphorous inks could be used for a wide range of industrial applications. Source: Aalto University A team of researchers from Aalto University in Finland has developed inks made of graphene-like materials for use in inkjet printing.

The black phosphorous inks are compatible with conventional inkjet printing techniques for optoelectronics and photonics.

Black phosphorous opens up the possibility for the development of a new generation of photonic and optoelectronic devices. While these post-graphene nanomaterials potentially hold great interest, there has yet to be a practical real-world exploitation of this material that isn’t hindered by complex material fabrication or poor environmental stability, researchers say.

"Our inkjet printing demonstration makes possible for the first time the scalable mass fabrication of black phosphorous-based photonic and optoelectronic devices with the long-term stability necessary for a wide range of industrial applications," says Professor Zhipei Sun of Aalto University.

Researchers optimized the chemical composition to achieve a stable ink through the balance of fluidic effects. This enabled the inkjet printing of new functional photonic and optoelectronic devices with impressive print quality and uniformity, such as printing of intricate graphics or photos on paper.

Printed black phosphorous-based nonlinear optical devices can be easily inserted into lasers to act as ultra-quick optical shutters, converting the continuous beam of laser radiation into a repetitive series of very short bursts of light suited for industrial and medical applications such as machining, imaging and sensing. Black phosphorous was also acts as an efficient and responsive light detector.

Researchers demonstrated that black phosphorous ink can be integrated with existing CMOS technologies, while the inkjet printing technique developed offers the prospect of supporting the fabrication of heterostructured materials.

The full research can be found in the journal Nature Communications.