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 (√3×√3)R30∘ 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 (√3×√3)R30∘ form, but with different domain orientations resulting from the structural properties of the initial wetting monolayer. (paper)