Solid argon as a possible substrate for quasi-freestanding silicene

Abstract

We study the structural and electronic properties of silicene on solid Ar(111) substrate using ab-initio calculations. We demonstrate that due to weak interaction quasi-freestanding silicene is realized in this system. The small binding energy of only $-32$ meV per Si atom also indicates the possibility to separate silicene from the solid Ar(111) substrate. In addition, a band gap of $11$ meV and a significant splitting of the energy levels due to spin-orbit coupling are observed.

References in corpus (3)

• Quantum ESPRESSO: a modular and open-source software project for quantum simulations of materials
• Ab initio Study of Graphene on SiC
• Exact solutions for a type of electron pairing model with spin-orbit interactions and Zeeman coupling

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Protected edge states in silicene antidots and dots in magnetic field