St. Petersburg State University: Device for producing silicene

2023: Product Announcement

Researchers at St. Petersburg State University were the first in Russia to create and patent a device for producing silicene, a material for the development of future microelectronics. This was announced in mid-June 2023 by the press service of the university.

As stated in St. Petersburg State University, this unique development for Russia could become promising for post-silicon microelectronics in the future. Scientists from St. Petersburg State University used thermal sublimation of the starting material to obtain a thin film. To do this, on a tungsten substrate, where metal particles are deposited and form a thin layer of a silicene film. The process takes place in a vacuum to provide clean and unobstructed film forming conditions. Physicists at St. Petersburg State University applied an atomic flux of silicon to a tungsten substrate heated to 200 ° C with a silver layer already applied. Due to the movement of silicon atoms on the surface of the heated substrate, the researchers were able to obtain a single-layer silicene, and large crystalline domains of silicene were able to form due to the structural parameters of the silver layer.

Scientists from St. Petersburg State University invented a device for producing silicene

The peculiarity of the technology lies in the formation of a single-layer silicene. Our development differs from other analogues in the increased size of nanocrystalline domains, reaching 100 nm per 100 nm, "said Alexey Komolov, professor at the Department of Solid State Electronics, St. Petersburg State University.

According to the press service of St. Petersburg State University, as of June 16, 2023, researchers are intensively studying materials that could replace expensive crystalline silicon in microelectronics devices. One of them is graphene, and its silicon analogue is silicene. According to researchers at St. Petersburg State University, graphene and silicene have atoms laid in one layer of hexagons, resembling bee honeycombs, but if graphene has this layer flat, then the hexagons of silicene are corrugated.^[1]

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