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We report first-principles theoretical investigations of possible metal contacts to monolayer black phosphorus (BP). By analyzing lattice geometry, five metal surfaces are found to have minimal lattice mismatch with BP: Cu(111), Zn(0001), In(110), Ta(110), and Nb(110). Further studies indicate Ta and Nb bond strongly with monolayer BP causing substantial bond distortions, but the combined Ta-BP and Nb-BP form good metal surfaces to contact a second layer BP. By analyzing the geometry, bonding, electronic structure, charge transfer, potential, and band bending, it is concluded that Cu(111) is the best candidate to form excellent Ohmic contact to monolayer BP. The other four metal surfaces or combined surfaces also provide viable structures to form metal/BP contacts, but they have Schottky character. Finally, the band bending property in the current-in-plane (CIP) structure where metal/BP is connected to a freestanding monolayer BP, is investigated. By both work function estimates and direct calculations of the two-probe CIP structure, we find that the freestanding BP channel is n type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report a first-principles theoretical approach for analyzing linear and circular photogalvanic effects (PGEs) based on density functional theory within the nonequilibrium Green’s function formalism. Using this approach we investigate the PGE phenomena in monolayer black phosphorus (MBP) doped with sulfur atoms. The impurity doping breaks the space inversion symmetry of pristine MBP, leading to a Cs symmetry with a mirror reflection plane normal to the zigzag direction of the MBP lattice. Governed by this symmetry, a linear PGE is induced in both zigzag and armchair directions, and a circular PGE is induced along the zigzag direction. A robust broadband photoresponse is found from the near-infrared to the visible range for the MBP device. There is a strong anisotropy in PGE: photoresponse in the zigzag direction can be larger by an order of magnitude than that in the armchair direction. We identify the origin of the observed PGE as the inter-band transitions from the impurity and valence bands to the conduction bands, which involves a transfer of angular momentum from photons to electrons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]