Designing substrates for silicene and germanene: First-principles calculations

We propose a guideline for exploring substrates that stabilize the monolayer honeycomb structure of silicene and germanene while simultaneously preserving the Dirac states: in addition to having a strong binding energy to the monolayer, a suitable substrate should be a large-gap semiconductor with a proper work function such that the Dirac point lies in the gap and far from the substrate states when their bands align. We illustrate our idea by performing first-principles calculations for silicene and germanene on the Al-terminated (0001) surface of Al₂O₃ . The overlaid monolayers on Al-terminated Al₂O₃ (0001) retain the main structural profile of the low-buckled honeycomb structure via a binding energy comparable to the one between silicene and Ag(111). An unfolded band structure derived from the k -projection method reveals that a gapped Dirac cone is formed at the K point due to the structural distortion and the interaction with the substrate. The gaps of 0.4 and 0.3 eV, respectively, for the supported silicene and germanene suggest that they may have potential applications in nanoelectronics.