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Raman investigation of air-stable silicene nanosheets on an inert graphite surface

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Abstract

The fascinating properties of two dimensional (2D) crystals have gained increasing interest for many applications. The synthesis of a 2D silicon structure, namely silicene, is attracting great interest for possible development of next generation electronic devices. The main difficulty in working with silicene remains its strong tendency to oxidation when exposed to air as a consequence of its relatively highly buckled structure. In this work, we univocally identify the Raman mode of air-stable low-buckled silicene nanosheets synthesized on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) located at 542.5 cm−1. The main focus of this work is Raman spectroscopy and mapping analyses in combination with ab initio calculations. Scanning tunneling microscopy images reveal the presence of a patchwork of Si three-dimensional (3D) clusters and contiguous Si areas presenting a honeycomb atomic arrangement, rotated by 30° with respect to the HOPG substrate underneath, with a lattice parameter of 0.41 ± 0.02 nm and a buckling of the Si atoms of 0.05 nm. Raman analysis supports the co-existence of 3D silicon clusters and 2D silicene. The Raman shift of low-buckled silicene on an inert substrate has not been reported so far and it is completely different from the one calculated for free-standing silicene and the ones measured for silicene grown on Ag(111) surfaces. Our experimental results are perfectly reproduced by our ab initio calculations of deposited silicene nanosheets. This leads us to conclude that the precise value of the observed Raman shift crucially depends on the strain between the silicene and the HOPG substrate.

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Acknowledgements

H. V., F. J., and C. L. gratefully acknowledge the HPC centers of the EDF, IDRIS (Grant i2016-090642), and CERMM for computational resources and the Hariri Foundation for Sustainable Human Development for the scholarship awarded to F. J.. M. D. C., P. C., M. S. and M. S. would like to acknowledge the European Community for the RISE Project CoExAN GA644076 and the project “Silicene and Germanene: novel two-dimensional nanomaterial” funded by the University of Roma Tor Vergata (Italy).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma “Tor Vergata”, Roma, 00133, Italy

    Paola Castrucci, Tiziano Delise, Manuela Scarselli, Matteo Salvato & Maurizio De Crescenzi

  2. Center for Nanotechnology Innovation c/o NEST, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Pisa, 56127, Italy

    Filippo Fabbri

  3. Consorzio di Ricerca Hypatia, c/o Italian Space Agency, Roma, 00133, Italy

    Sara Pascale

  4. Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale, Università di Roma “Tor Vergata”, Roma, 00133, Italy

    Roberto Francini

  5. CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université, IM2NP, UMR 7334, Marseille, 13397, France

    Isabelle Berbezier

  6. EDF R&D, Department Materials and Mechanics of Components (MMC), Moret-sur-Loing, 77818, France

    Christoph Lechner

  7. CNRS-LPICM, Ecole Polytechnique, Université Paris-Saclay, Palaiseau, 91128, France

    Fatme Jardali & Holger Vach

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  1. Paola Castrucci
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Correspondence to Paola Castrucci, Filippo Fabbri or Holger Vach.

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Castrucci, P., Fabbri, F., Delise, T. et al. Raman investigation of air-stable silicene nanosheets on an inert graphite surface. Nano Res. 11, 5879–5889 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-018-2097-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-018-2097-6

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