Is Silicene the Next Graphene?

Abstract

This article reviews silicene, a relatively new allotrope of silicon, which can also be viewed as the silicon version of graphene. Graphene is a two-dimensional material with unique electronic properties qualitatively different from those of standard semiconductors such as silicon. While many other two-dimensional materials are now being studied, our focus here is solely on silicene. We first discuss its synthesis and the challenges presented. Next, a survey of some of its physical properties is provided. Silicene shares many of the fascinating properties of graphene, such as the so-called Dirac electronic dispersion. The slightly different structure, however, leads to a few major differences compared to graphene, such as the ability to open a bandgap in the presence of an electric field or on a substrate, a key property for digital electronics applications. We conclude with a brief survey of some of the potential applications of silicene.

8 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films
• Ultrahigh electron mobility in suspended graphene
• Valley-Polarized Metals and Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect in Silicene
• Electronic structure of silicon-based nanostructures
• Group-IV graphene- and graphane-like nanosheets
• Spin-Valleytronics in Silicene: Quantum-Spin-Quantum-Anomalous Hall Insulators and Single-Valley Semimetals
• Intrinsic spin Hall effect in silicene: transition from spin Hall to normal insulator

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Spin and valley polarization of plasmons in silicene due to external fields
• ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ invariance of Germanene on MoS${}_2$ from first principles
• Effects of electron-impurity scattering on density of states in silicene: impurity bands and band-gap narrowing