Researchers in the US and Italy say they have succeeded in making the first field-effect transistors from “silicene” – something that was thought difficult to do until now, since the material rapidly degrades in air. Silicene is a sheet of silicon just one atom thick arranged in a hexagonal lattice and is a close cousin of graphene (which is a sheet of carbon just one atom thick arranged in a similar way). Unlike its carbon counterpart, however, the new silicon allotrope does not exist in nature. Silicene can, in principle, be more easily transformed (chemically and structurally) than graphene, which might make it a more versatile tuneable electronics material in terms of band structure, band gap opening and charge mobility. It could also fit very well into existing silicon-based electronics (which make up the vast majority of all modern-day devices) unlike graphene or other 2D materials that are unfamiliar to the industry, says the team………
http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/60110
