Electronic properties of silicene nanoribbons using tight-binding approach

A monolayer silicon (Si) atoms arranged in honeycomb lattice, also known as silicene, is one of the potential candidates for future nanoelectronic devices. In addition to its extraordinary electronic properties, silicene is believed to be compatible with the semiconductor fabrication technology. This paper models the band structures and density of states (DOS) of various widths of silicene nanoribbons (SiNRs) in both zigzag and armchair orientation using nearest neighbour tight-binding (NNTB) approach. The main advantage of this approach is low computational cost. The semiconducting band gap values of armchair SiNRs extracted from the results range from 0.15eV to 0.79eV, which are suitable for nanoelectronic applications.