The Growth and Characterization of PECVD Silicene

Silicene, a two-dimensional nanoscale allotrope of silicon atoms with a buckled honeycomb structure, is predicted to have a many interesting features. There is no evidence for the existence of natural silicene. Until recently, molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) has been the only successful technique for silicene synthesis. Recently, we have found that plasma-enhanced chemical-vapor deposition (PECVD) has the potential to grow economically viable, large scale, high-quality mono- and multi-layer silicene comparable to that grown using MBE. In addition, we have shown that PECVD grown silicene is naturally hydrogenated and resistance to oxidation. In this work, we have grown PECVD silicene on polycrystalline and single crystalline silver thin films and characterized them using Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, and X-ray photo-electron spectroscopy. The results show that we can grow nearly defect-free silicene on single crystalline Ag(111) films. We will discuss crystalline structure, hydrogenation, and oxidation-resistance properties of the PECVD silicene.