Journal
NEW JOURNAL OF PHYSICS
Volume 14, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/14/3/033003
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Funding
- Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture [22740196]
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [22740196] Funding Source: KAKEN
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Silicene is a monolayer of silicon atoms forming a two-dimensional (2D) honeycomb lattice and shares almost all the remarkable properties of graphene. The low-energy structure of silicene is described by Dirac electrons with relatively large spin-orbit interactions owing to its buckled structure. A key observation is that the band structure can be controlled by applying an electric field to a silicene sheet. In particular, the gap closes at a certain critical electric field. Examining the band structure of a silicene nanoribbon, we show that a topological phase transition occurs from a topological insulator to a band insulator with an increase of electric field. We also show that it is possible to generate helical zero modes anywhere in a silicene sheet by adjusting the electric field locally to this critical value. The region may act as a quantum wire or a quantum dot surrounded by topological and/or band insulators. We explicitly construct the wave functions for some simple geometries based on the low-energy effective Dirac theory. These results are also applicable to germanene, which is a 2D honeycomb structure of germanium.
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