Silicene

Silicene is an allotrope of silicon with a structure similar to that of graphene.

Compared with graphene, silicene has several advantages:


 * a much stronger spin–orbit coupling, which may lead to a quantum spin effect
 * a better tunability of the band gap which is an energy range in a solid where no electronic states can exist; this is necessary for an effective field effect transistor (FET) operating at room temperature
 * an easier valley polarization suitable for valleytronics (from valley and electronics) which is an area in semiconductors that exploits local extrema ("valleys") in the electronic band structure.