Tuesday, December 18, 2012

1212.3679 (Lan Chen et al.)

Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking and Dynamic Phase Transition in Monolayer
Silicene
   [PDF]

Lan Chen, Hui Li, Baojie Feng, Zijing Ding, Jinglan Qiu, Peng Cheng, Kehui Wu, Sheng Meng
The (r3xr3)R30{\deg} honeycomb of silicene monolayer on Ag(111) was found to undergo a phase transition to two types of mirror-symmetric boundary-separated rhombic phases at temperatures below 40 K by scanning tunneling microscopy. The first-principles calculations reveal that weak interactions between silicene and Ag(111) drive the spontaneous ultra buckling in the monolayer silicene, forming two energy-degenerate and mirror-symmetric (r3xr3)R30{\deg} rhombic phases, in which the linear band dispersion near Dirac point (DP) and a significant gap opening (150 meV) at DP were induced. The low transition barrier between these two phases enables them interchangeable through dynamic flip-flop motion, resulting in the (r3xr3)R30{\deg} honeycomb structure observed at high temperature.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1212.3679

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