Silicene Nanomesh

TL;DR

This paper investigates how creating nanomesh structures in silicene can open a band gap, enhancing its potential for nanoelectronic applications, with detailed analysis of electronic properties and device performance at different temperatures.

Contribution

It demonstrates that silicene nanomeshes can have tunable band gaps depending on their structure, providing a pathway to improve silicene's electronic applications.

Findings

Band gap opens in silicene nanomesh with even-width walls.

Band gap size increases as wall width decreases.

Device performance degrades at room temperature.

Abstract

Similar to graphene, zero band gap limits the application of silicene in nanoelectronics despite of its high carrier mobility. By using first-principles calculations, we reveal that a band gap is opened in silicene nanomesh (SNM) when the width W of the wall between the neighboring holes is even. The size of the band gap increases with the reduced W and has a simple relation with the ratio of the removed Si atom and the total Si atom numbers of silicene. Quantum transport simulation reveals that the sub-10 nm single-gated SNM field effect transistors show excellent performance at zero temperature but such a performance is greatly degraded at room temperature.