Silicene: Compelling Experimental Evidence for Graphenelike Two-Dimensional Silicon

Abstract

Because of its unique physical properties, graphene, a 2D honeycomb arrangement of carbon atoms, has attracted tremendous attention. Silicene, the graphene equivalent for silicon, could follow this trend, opening new perspectives for applications, especially due to its compatibility with Si-based electronics. Silicene has been theoretically predicted as a buckled honeycomb arrangement of Si atoms and having an electronic dispersion resembling that of relativistic Dirac fermions. Here we provide compelling evidence, from both structural and electronic properties, for the synthesis of epitaxial silicene sheets on a silver (111) substrate, through the combination of scanning tunneling microscopy and angular-resolved photoemission spectroscopy in conjunction with calculations based on density functional theory.

MnPSe3 Monolayer: A Promising 2D Visible‐Light Photohydrolytic Catalyst with High Carrier Mobility

“…Intractably, lack of a band gap limits its practical applications to high speed switching devices, photocatalysts, etc 2. Nevertheless, the successful preparation of graphene has prompted researchers to investigate more 2D materials such as hexagonal BN,3 transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs),4 silicene,5 germanane,[[qv: 5b]],6 phosphorene,7 and MXene 8. These 2D materials attract intensive interest due to their novel electronic, mechanical or photocatalytic behaviors,9 making up the shortages of graphene and expanding the applications of 2D materials to field‐effect transistors (FETs)10 and photocatalysts 11…”

Borophene as an anode material for Ca, Mg, Na or Li ion storage: A first-principle study

“…Graphene success motivated numerous experimental and theoretical researches toward the prediction and synthesis of other two-dimensional (2D) compounds, such as hexagonal boron-nitride 6,7 , silicene 8,9 , germanene 10 , stanene 11 and transition metal dichalcogenides [12][13][14] like molybdenum disulfide (MoS 2 ).…”

Promising thermoelectric properties of phosphorenes

“…New two-dimensional crystals have been investigated intensively [1] and several of them have been successfully fabricated, such as hexagonal boron nitride [2][3][4], silicene [5][6][7][8], and a large family of layered transition metal dichalcogenides [9][10][11][12]. Recently, a single layer of phosphorus, named as black-phosphorene (black-P) has been exfoliated [13,14] and revealed as a new member of candidate materials for nanoelectronics applications [15][16][17][18][19] such as field-effect transistors [20,21], wide-range photodetectors [22,23], and high-performance lithium-ion batteries [24].…”