Insights into the spontaneous formation of silicene sheet on diboride thin films

The realization of silicene-free ZrB₂(0001) thin films grown on Si(111) by $Ar+$ ion bombardment allowed for studying the spontaneous formation of silicene on their surfaces. Imaging the bare ZrB₂(0001) surface by STM revealed the structures of Zr-terminated and B-terminated ZrB₂(0001) created by the bombardment. The spontaneous formation of a continuous silicene sheet on a sputtering-induced disordered ZrB₂ surface demonstrates that silicene does not require an atomically-flat crystalline template to be stabilized. This opens the way to the fabrication of large scale single-crystal sheets and points out the potential of silicene to be used in the next generation silicon-based technologies.