Effects of temperature and strain rate on the mechanical properties of silicene

Based on first-principles calculations of structure optimization, phonon modes and finite temperature molecular dynamics, we predict that silicon and germanium have stable, two-dimensional, low-buckled, honeycomb structures. Similar to graphene, they are ambipolar and their charge carriers can behave like a massless Dirac fermions due to their pi- and pi*-bands which are crossed linearly at the Fermi level. In addition to these fundamental properties, bare and hydrogen passivated nanoribbons of Si and Ge show remarkable electronic and magnetic properties, which are size and orientation dependent. These properties offer interesting alternatives for the engineering of diverse nanodevices.