In recent years, 2D materials have attracted increasing attention from the scientific community due to their superlative properties. The stanene, a graphene like compound formed by Sn atoms, may have unique properties because of the spin-orbit coupling SOC (such as the Quantum Spin Hall Effect QSH, topological superconductivity, among others), that could eventually have applications in spintronics and quantum computing. In the experiment stanene epitaxial growth was explored by evaporating Sn onto a Ag(111) substrate. Partial results using spectroscopic techniques such as LEED and XPS agreed with literature. Regarding measurements made with UPS/ARPES, dispersion relations were obtained for the surface state of the Sn/Ag(111) sample: for 1/3ML of Sn they matched with the reported results for the surface alloy Ag$_2$Sn; conversely, for (1/3+0,5)ML of Sn they mismatched with the reported parabolic relation for the stanene, particularly, they were indistinguishable from the surface alloy one. Probably, lack of formation of stanene was caused by an excessive heating during the sample preparation process, that could have produced an increase in the surface alloy Ag$_2$Sn thickness.
Published : "arXiv Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics".