Compelling experimental evidence of a Dirac cone in the electronic structure of a 2D Silicon layer

Abstract

The remarkable properties of graphene stem from its two-dimensional (2D) structure, with a linear dispersion of the electronic states at the corners of the Brillouin zone (BZ) forming a Dirac cone. Since then, other 2D materials have been suggested based on boron, silicon, germanium, phosphorus, tin, and metal di-chalcogenides. Here, we present an experimental investigation of a single silicon layer on Au(111) using low energy electron diffraction (LEED), high resolution angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (HR-ARPES), and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). The HR-ARPES data show compelling evidence that the silicon based 2D overlayer is responsible for the observed linear dispersed feature in the valence band, with a Fermi velocity of v_F ~10^(+6) m.s^(-1) comparable to that of graphene. The STM images show extended and homogeneous domains, offering a viable route to the fabrication of silicene-based opto-electronic devices.

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Epitaxial Synthesis of Blue Phosphorene
• Silicene nanoribbons on an insulating thin film
• Interband $\pi$-like plasmon in silicene grown on silver
• Stacking-configuration-enriched essential properties in bilayer silicenes
• Reentrant Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov superfluidity in the honeycomb lattice
• Five-fold Symmetry in Au-Si Metallic Glass
• Opacity of graphene independent of light frequency and polarization due to the topological charge of the Dirac points
• The linear Dirac spectrum and the Weyl states in the Drude-Sommerfeld topological model