The Metallic Nature of Epitaxial Silicene Monolayers on Ag(111) |
| |
Authors: | Neil W. Johnson Patrick Vogt Paola De Padova Israel Perez Ernst Z. Kurmaev Guy Le Lay Alexander Moewes |
| |
Affiliation: | 1. University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada;2. Technische Universit?t Berlin, Berlin, Germany;3. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche‐ISM, Rome, Italy;4. Institute of Metal Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences – Ural Division, Russia;5. Aix‐Marseille University PIIM‐CNRS, Campus de Saint Jér?me, France |
| |
Abstract: | Silicene is a two‐dimensional structure composed of a buckled hexagonal honeycomb lattice of silicon atoms. Freestanding silicene is yet to be synthesized, but epitaxial silicene monolayers have been directly observed or predicted to exist on a number of supporting substrates. Herein the atomic and electronic structures of five distinct epitaxial silicene morphologies on Ag(111) are examined through the complementary techniques of density functional theory and soft X‐ray spectroscopy at the Si L2,3 edge. Hybridization with the Ag(111) substrate is shown to cause these silicene monolayers to become strongly metallic, and the specific electronic interactions that are responsible for this metallic nature are determined. The results imply that epitaxial silicene on Ag(111) does not possess the Dirac cone electronic structure that is characteristic of freestanding silicene and graphene sheets. |
| |
Keywords: | DFT calculations silicene soft X‐ray spectroscopy 2D materials epitaxy |
|
|