Electronic Structure and Carrier Mobilities of Arsenene and Antimonene Nanoribbons: A First-Principle Study

Arsenene and antimonene, i.e. two-dimensional (2D) As and Sb monolayers, are the recently proposed cousins of phosphorene (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 54, 3112 (2015)). Through first-principle calculations, we systematically investigate electronic and transport properties of the corresponding As and Sb nanoribbons, which are cut from the arsenene and antimonene nanosheets. We find that different from the 2D systems, band features of As and Sb nanoribbons are dependent on edge shapes. All armchair As/Sb nanoribbons keep the indirect band gap feature, while the zigzag ones transfer to direct semiconductors. Quantum confinement in nanoribbons enhances the gap sizes, for which both the armchair and zigzag ones have a gap scaling rule inversely proportional to the ribbon width. Comparing to phosphorene, the large deformation potential constants in the As and Sb nanoribbons cause small carrier mobilities in the orders of magnitude of 10(1)–10(2) cm(2)/Vs. Our study demonstrates that the nanostructures of group-Vb elements would possess different electronic properties for the P, As, and Sb ones, which have diverse potential applications for nanoelectronics and nanodevices.