Growth of Thin Oxidation-Resistive Crystalline Si Nanostructures on Graphene

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the growth of single-crystalline, oxidation-resistant silicon nanostructures on graphene, exhibiting silicene-like properties and potential for scalable nanoscale electronic device fabrication.

Contribution

It introduces a novel bottom-up method for growing crystalline silicon nanostructures on graphene with unique electronic and structural properties.

Findings

Silicon nanostructures are single crystalline and oxidation resistant.

Ultra-thin silicon exhibits silicene-like behavior with metallic conductivity.

The method enables large-scale patterned silicon nanostructure arrays on graphene.

Abstract

We report the growth of Si nanostructures, either as thin films or nanoparticles, on graphene substrates. The Si nanostructures are shown to be single crystalline, air stable and oxidation resistive, as indicated by the observation of a single crystalline Si Raman mode at around 520 cm-1, a STM image of an ordered surface structure under ambient condition, and a Schottky junction with graphite. Ultra-thin silicon regions exhibit silicene-like behavior, including a Raman mode at around 550 cm-1, a triangular lattice structure in STM that has distinctly different lattice spacing from that of either graphene or thicker Si, and metallic conductivity of up to 500 times higher than that of graphite. This work suggests a bottom-up approach to forming a Si nanostructure array on a large scale patterned graphene substrate for fabricating nanoscale Si electronic devices.