Preparation of Silicene by Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition

Silicene, one monolayer of silicon atoms, has attracted much attention due to its easily tunable band gap. Alternative methods for growing silicene are needed to replace current multi-step molecular-beam-epitaxy (MBE) process for potential large scale synthesis and application. Here, we report possibility of growing single and multilayer silicene by Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) method. This technique has the advantage to achieve deposition at a less stringent vacuum environment and with a few processing steps. Analysis of Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and X-ray photon electron spectroscopy studies of PECVD silicene will be discussed.