Growth and structural properties of silicene at multilayer coverage

At monolayer coverage, silicene on Ag(1 1 1) may present different structural phases depending on the growth conditions. At multilayer coverage, only one structural phase has been reported: the (root 3 x root 3) R30 degrees phase. However, no link between the structural arrangement of the monolayer and that of the multilayer has been addressed. In this paper, reporting experimental work based on low-energy electron diffraction and scanning tunneling microscopy, we focus on the structural aspects of a multilayer film of silicene. We demonstrate that it exhibits one structural arrangement, namely the (root 3 x root 3) R30 degrees form, but with different domain orientations resulting from the structural properties of the initial wetting monolayer.