Abstract

Silicene ¹ is a single atomic layer of silicon (Si) much like graphene, the first example of an elemental two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterial whose study led to the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. ² Until 2010 or so, the only known crystalline form of elemental silicon was the one with the so-called diamond structure (a three-dimensional [3D] cubic structure with sp ³ -bonded Si atoms). That silicon could potentially form a 2D structure was first postulated by Takeda and Shiraishi. ^{3 , 4} This early work and others, both theoretical ^{5 – 7} and experimental, ^{8 , 9} went mostly unnoticed until the prediction that silicene could have similar exotic properties as graphene by Guzmán-Verri and Lew Yan Voon in 2007, ¹ and silicene nanoribbons were reported to have been fabricated on a silver substrate by Kara et al. in 2009. ¹⁰ Since then, the study of silicene has exploded, mainly theoretically ^{11 – 527} but also experimentally. ^{528 – 612}