Abstract Anisotropic materials with intrinsic one-dimensional architectures, where chains or tubes align along a crystallographic axis, exhibit direction-dependent optical responses and serve as ideal building blocks for polarization-sensitive optoelectronics. While progress exists in engineered compounds, discovering elemental crystals with naturally ordered one-dimensional building blocks exhibiting giant optical anisotropy remains challenging. Here, we report the synthesis of a direct-bandgap semiconducting one-dimensional phosphorus single crystal composed of unique wavy polygonal tubes. The monoclinic lattice structure is revealed by single-crystal X-ray diffraction and advanced transmission electron microscopy. The crystal exhibits giant birefringence in the visible and near-infrared regions, stemming from electron localization and anisotropic transitions of the phosphorus 3 p orbital along the tube axis. The low-symmetry structure endows remarkable linear and nonlinear optical anisotropies, including orientation-dependent photoluminescence, Raman scattering, and second-harmonic generation. This study establishes a paradigm for designing giant optical anisotropies, opening avenues for on-chip polarization devices and nonlinear photonic circuits.
Zhang et al. (Sat,) studied this question.