Exotic Electronic Property of Phosphorene Nanoribbons Driven by External Electric Field

By the means of screened exchange density functional theory, we find that the phosphorene nanoribbons with bare zigzag edges that undergo Peierls distortion is a antiferromagnetic semiconductor in which the polarized states are mainly localized at the edges. Under application of external electric fields, the phosphorene nanoribbons present exotic electronic structure transitions including semiconducting, half-metallic, and metallic states.