Last year when I was looking into silicene it was all very controversial and nobody seemed to have given all the necessary evidence to prove they'd made it (i.e. honeycomb lattice with the right atomic spacing AND dirac cones in the bandstucture).
Now I guess it's not only accepted but there are already devices? That's some rapid progress.
We've known about silicene and germanene for a while, the question of their stability free standing is still open. But because their application primarily lay in electronics the goal is to grow a silicene or germanene in place, on top of some inductor and use it as is. Its hard though, you need just the right surface with just the right AVD settings. Basically you do a few thousand simulations to figure out what might work, then you lock a grad student in a lab and have them try to grow it.
We knew it would likely be possible to grow, but how easily and what final properties it would have (due to interactions with the surface it is grown on) weren't entirely known. Also keep in mind this is one of a dozen different possible technologies for building future devices with.
[+] [-] flashingleds|11 years ago|reply
Now I guess it's not only accepted but there are already devices? That's some rapid progress.
[+] [-] kevinwang|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acadien|11 years ago|reply
We knew it would likely be possible to grow, but how easily and what final properties it would have (due to interactions with the surface it is grown on) weren't entirely known. Also keep in mind this is one of a dozen different possible technologies for building future devices with.
[+] [-] ommunist|11 years ago|reply