Quasi-freestanding epitaxial silicene on Ag(111) by oxygen intercalation.

ABSTRACT: Silicene is a monolayer allotrope of silicon atoms arranged in a honeycomb structure with massless Dirac fermion characteristics similar to graphene. It merits development of silicon-based multifunctional nanoelectronic and spintronic devices operated at room temperature because of strong spin-orbit coupling. Nevertheless, until now, silicene could only be epitaxially grown on conductive substrates. The strong silicene-substrate interaction may depress its superior electronic properties. We report a quasi-freestanding silicene layer that has been successfully obtained through oxidization of bilayer silicene on the Ag(111) surface. The oxygen atoms intercalate into the underlayer of silicene, resulting in isolation of the top layer of silicene from the substrate. In consequence, the top lay

SUBMITTER: Du Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4985226 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature