Evidence of silicene in honeycomb structures of silicon on Ag(111)

TL;DR

This paper investigates the formation and structure of silicene on Ag(111), revealing how silicon evolves from fragments to a complete monolayer and multilayer silicene, supported by experimental and computational analysis.

Contribution

It provides detailed structural insights into silicene formation on Ag(111) and introduces methods for synthesizing high-quality silicene layers.

Findings

Silicene structures evolve from silicon fragments to complete monolayer and multilayer forms.

Shared silicon ring building blocks characterize the different phases.

The study combines experimental observations with first-principles calculations.

Abstract

In the search for evidence of silicene, a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice of silicon, it is important to obtain a complete picture for the evolution of Si structures on Ag(111), which is believed to be the most suitable substrate for growth of silicene so far. In this work we report the finding and evolution of several monolayer superstructures of silicon on Ag(111) depending on the coverage and temperature. Combined with first-principles calculations, the detailed structures of these phases have been illuminated. These structure were found to share common building blocks of silicon rings, and they evolve from a fragment of silicene to a complete monolayer silicene and multilayer silicene. Our results elucidate how silicene formes on Ag(111) surface and provide methods to synthesize high-quality and large-scale silicene.