From goldene to silverene

The synthesis of silicene, the first artificial graphenelike 2D material in 2012 [1], has launched a gold rush for novel ones, which have appeared at a pace of about one per year, from germanene and borophene in 2014 to goldene in 2024 [2]. Goldene is the first free standing noble metallene synthesized. It was obtained by wet procedures with maximun lateral size of 100 nm [3]. As early as 1976, an ultra-thin epitaxial gold film, i.e., few-layer goldene, formed in situ under UHV on a Ge(111) substrate was detached ex situ in solution with an appropriate germanium etchant, and further observed in Transmission Electron Microscopy and Diffraction (TEM/TED) [4]. Standalone metallic silverene has just been predicted by DFT calculations and ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations [5,6]. Here, a protocole and its achievement to get silverene and multi-layer silverene at mesoscopic scale, extremely attractive for high-end applications, will be described based on earlier studies [6,7,8].

[1] P. Vogt et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 108 (2012) 155501

[2] S. Kashiwaya et al., Nat. Synth. (2024) 1

[3] S. Kashiwaya et.al., 2D Mater., 12 (2025) 033001

[4] G. Le Lay et al., Thin Solid Films, 35 (1976) 273

[5] E. J. A. dos Santos et al., ACS Omega, 10 (2025) 26892

[6] A. Zulfiqar et al., Surfaces and Interfaces, 72 (2025) 107452

[7] M. Bertucci et al., Surf. Sci., 85 (1979) 471

[8] G. Le Lay et al., Surf. Sci., 287/288 (1993) 539