We report on the oxidation of self-assembled silicene nanoribbons grown on the Ag(110) surface using Scanning Tunneling Microscopy and High-Resolution Photoemission Spectroscopy. The results show that silicene nanoribbons present a strong resistance towards oxidation using molecular oxygen. This can be overcome by increasing the electric field in the STM tunnel junction above a threshold of +2.6 V to induce oxygen dissociation and reaction. The higher reactivity of the silicene nanoribbons towards atomic oxygen is observed as expected. The HR-PES confirm these observations: Even at high exposures of molecular oxygen, the Si 2p core-level peaks corresponding to pristine silicene remain dominant, reflecting a very low reactivity to molecular oxygen. Complete oxidation is obtained following exposure to high doses of atomic oxygen; the Si 2p core level peak corresponding to pristine silicene disappears.
@article{arxiv.2006.13780,
title = {Tip-induced oxidation of silicene nano-ribbons},
author = {Mohammed Rachid Tchalala Hanna Enriquez and Azzedine Bendounan and Andrew J. Mayne and Gérald Dujardin and Abdelkader Kara and Mustapha Ait Ali and Hamid Oughaddou},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.13780},
year = {2020}
}