A review on silicene - New candidate for electronics

    Authors

    A. Kara; H. Enriquez; A. P. Seitsonen; Lcly Voon; S. Vizzini; B. Aufray;H. Oughaddou

    Comments

    Authors: contact us about adding a copy of your work at STARS@ucf.edu

    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Surf. Sci. Rep.

    Keywords

    Silicene; Silicon; Honeycomb; Epitaxial growth; Metal surfaces; Electronic structure; STM; SCANNING-TUNNELING-MICROSCOPY; SI/CU(110) SURFACE ALLOY; TRANSITION-METAL ALLOYS; X-RAY-DIFFRACTION; ATOMIC-STRUCTURE; AG(001); SURFACE; QUANTUM WIRES; GE TETRAMERS; THIN-FILMS; AES-LEED; Chemistry, Physical; Physics, Condensed Matter

    Abstract

    Silicene - the silicon- based counterpart of graphene - has a two dimensional structure that is responsible for the variety of potentially useful chemical and physical properties. The existence of silicene has been achieved recently owing to experiments involving epitaxial growth of silicon as stripes on Ag(001), ribbons on Ag(110), and sheets on Ag(111). The nano-ribbons observed on Ag(110) were found - by both high definition experimental scanning tunneling microscopy images and density functional theory calculations - to consist of an arched honeycomb structure. Angle resolved photo-emission experiments on these silicene nano-ribbons on Ag(110), along the direction of the ribbons, showed a band structure which is analogous to the Dirac cones of graphene. Unlike silicon surfaces, which are highly reactive to oxygen, the silicene nano-ribbons were found to be resistant to oxygen reactivity. On the theoretical side, recent extensive efforts have been deployed to understand the properties of standalone silicene sheets and nano-ribbons using both tight-binding and density functional theory calculations. Unlike graphene it is demonstrated that silicene sheets are stable only if a small buckling (0.44 angstrom) is present. The electronic properties of silicene nano-ribbons and silicene sheets were found to resemble those of graphene. Although this is a fairly new avenue, the already obtained outcome from these important first steps in understanding silicene showed promising features that could give a new future to silicon in the electronics industry, thus opening a promising route toward wide-range applications. In this review, we plan to introduce silicene by presenting the available experimental and theoretical studies performed to date, and suggest future directions to be explored to make the synthesis of silicene a viable one. (C) 2011 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.

    Journal Title

    Surface Science Reports

    Volume

    67

    Issue/Number

    1

    Publication Date

    1-1-2012

    Document Type

    Review

    Language

    English

    First Page

    1

    Last Page

    18

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000298239100001

    ISSN

    0167-5729

    Share

    COinS