Transition from silicene monolayer to thin Si films on Ag(111): comparison between experimental data and Monte Carlo simulation

Alberto Curcella; Romain Bernard; Yves Borensztein; Silvia Pandolfi; Geoffroy Prévot

doi:10.3762/bjnano.9.7

Transition from silicene monolayer to thin Si films on Ag(111): comparison between experimental data and Monte Carlo simulation

Beilstein J Nanotechnol. 2018 Jan 5:9:48-56. doi: 10.3762/bjnano.9.7. eCollection 2018.

Authors

Alberto Curcella¹, Romain Bernard¹, Yves Borensztein¹, Silvia Pandolfi¹, Geoffroy Prévot¹

Affiliation

¹ Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, CNRS-UMR 7588, Institut des NanoSciences de Paris, F-75005, Paris, France.

Abstract

Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) and low energy electron diffraction have been used to follow the growth of Si films on Ag(111) at various temperatures. Using a simple growth model, we have simulated the distribution of film thickness as a function of coverage during evaporation, for the different temperatures. In the temperature regime where multilayer silicene has been claimed to form (470-500 K), a good agreement is found with AES intensity variations and STM measurements within a Ag surfactant mediated growth, whereas a model with multilayer silicene growth fails to reproduce the AES measurements.

Keywords: Auger electron spectroscopy; scanning tunneling microscopy; silicene; silicon; silver.