Silicene Structures on Silver Surfaces

TL;DR

This study explores various silicene structures on silver surfaces, revealing how coverage and atomic arrangements influence buckling and apparent Si-Si distances, with implications for surface characterization.

Contribution

The paper provides a comprehensive theoretical analysis of silicene on Ag(111), detailing structural variations caused by different coverages and arrangements, and explaining STM image differences.

Findings

Silicene forms honeycomb, buckled structures on Ag surfaces.

Buckling causes apparent Si-Si distances as low as 1.89 Å.

Different STM images can result from minor structural translations.

Abstract

In this paper we report on several structures of silicene, the analog of graphene for silicon, on the silver surfaces Ag(100), Ag(110) and Ag(111). Deposition of Si produces honeycomb structures on these surfaces. In particular, we present an extensive theoretical study of silicene on Ag(111) for which several recent experimental studies have been published. Different silicene structures were obtained only by varying the silicon coverage and/or its atomic arrangement. All the structures studied show that silicene is buckled, with a Si-Si nearest neighbor distance varying between 2.28 and 2.5 A{\deg} . Due to the buckling in the silicene sheet, the apparent (lateral) Si-Si distance can be as low as 1.89 A{\deg} . We also found that for a given coverage and symmetry, one may observe different scanning tunneling microscopy images corresponding to structures that differ by only a translation.