Plumbene is a material made up of a single layer of

lead Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cu ...

atoms. The material is created in a process similar to that of

graphene Graphene () is an allotrope of carbon consisting of a single layer of atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice nanostructure.

silicene Silicene is a two-dimensional allotrope of silicon, with a hexagonal honeycomb structure similar to that of graphene. Contrary to graphene, silicene is not flat, but has a periodically buckled topology; the coupling between layers in silicene is ...

germanene Germanene is a material made up of a single layer of germanium atoms. The material is created in a process similar to that of silicene and graphene, in which high vacuum and high temperature are used to deposit a layer of germanium atoms on a sub ...

, and

stanene Stanene is a topological insulator, theoretically predicted by Prof. Shoucheng Zhang's group at Stanford, which may display dissipationless currents at its edges near room temperature. It is composed of tin atoms arranged in a single layer, in a ...

, in which high vacuum and high temperature are used to deposit a layer of lead atoms on a substrate. High-quality thin films of plumbene have revealed two-dimensional honeycomb structures. First researched by Indian scientists, further investigations are being done around the world.

Preparation and structure

In April 2019, J. Yuhara and others reported the deposition of a single atom thickness by

molecular beam epitaxy Molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) is an epitaxy method for thin-film deposition of single crystals. MBE is widely used in the manufacture of semiconductor devices, including transistors, and it is considered one of the fundamental tools for the devel ...

with a segregation method upon a

palladium Palladium is a chemical element with the symbol Pd and atomic number 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself na ...

surface in a

crystal lattice In geometry and crystallography, a Bravais lattice, named after , is an infinite array of discrete points generated by a set of discrete translation operations described in three dimensional space by : \mathbf = n_1 \mathbf_1 + n_2 \mathbf_2 + n ...

with

Miller indices Miller indices form a notation system in crystallography for lattice planes in crystal (Bravais) lattices. In particular, a family of lattice planes of a given (direct) Bravais lattice is determined by three integers ''h'', ''k'', and ''� ...

(111). The structure was confirmed with

scanning tunneling microscopy A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a type of microscope used for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, then at IBM Zürich, the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. ...

(STM) revealing a nearly flat honeycomb structure. There is no evidence of any three-dimensional islands, but one notices a unique nanostructured tessellation all over the terraces looking like a space-filling polyhedral foam reduced to dimension 2.

Properties

Plumbene's electronic and optical properties have been determined from ''

ab initio ''Ab initio'' ( ) is a Latin term meaning "from the beginning" and is derived from the Latin ''ab'' ("from") + ''initio'', ablative singular of ''initium'' ("beginning"). Etymology Circa 1600, from Latin, literally "from the beginning", from ab ...

'' calculations, indicating a band gap of 0.4 eV

References

{{reflist Lead Two-dimensional nanomaterials