Figure 1: Nearly fully spin-polarized states of silicene.
From: Gated silicene as a tunable source of nearly 100% spin-polarized electrons
(a) Low-buckled 2D honeycomb structure of silicene. Owing to the buckling, the IS can be removed by an external out-of-plane electric field Ez or when the thin film is placed on a substrate. (b) Schematic spin-resolved band structure of silicene around K and K' points in the presence of an out-of-plane electric field, Ez<Ec. The red and blue arrows indicate the spin direction. The band structure (c) and spin-resolved wavefunction (d) in the critical phase (Ez=Ec). The tight-binding (TB) fit (green lines) is seen to faithfully reproduce the band dispersion and the nearly 100% electron intrinsic spin-polarization of states near the K-point obtained by first-principles calculations (red dots). (e) The spin-splitting energy for silicene, and Ge, Sn, Pb counterparts as a function of Ez obtained by first-principles calculations.
