Silicene and germanene are also zero-gap semiconductors with massless fermion charge carriers FG-4592 chemical structure since their π and π* bands are also linear at the Fermi level [20]. Systems involving silicene and germanene may also be very important for their possible use in future nanoelectronic

devices, since the integration of germanene and silicene into current Si-based nanoelectronics would be more likely favored over graphene, which is vulnerable to perturbations from its supporting substrate, owing to its one-atom thickness. Germanene (or silicene), the counterpart of graphene, is predicted to have a geometry with low-buckled honeycomb structure for its most stable structures unlike the planar one of graphene [20–22]. The similarity among germanene, silicene, and graphene arises from the fact that Ge, Si, and C belong to the same group in the periodic table of elements, that is, they have similar electronic configurations. However, Ge and Si have larger ionic radius, which promotes sp 3 hybridization, while sp 2 hybridization is energetically more favorable

for C atoms. As EPZ004777 mouse a result, in 2D atomic layers of Si and Ge atoms, the bonding is formed by mixed sp 2 and sp 3 hybridization. Therefore, the stable germanene and silicene are slightly buckled, with one of the two sublattices of the honeycomb lattice being displaced vertically with respect to the other. In fact, interesting studies have already been performed in the superlattices with the involvement of germanium or/and silicon layers recently. For example, the thermal conductivities of Si/SiGe and Si/Ge superlattice systems are studied Endonuclease [23–25], showing that either in the cross- or in-plane directions, the systems exhibit reduced thermal conductivities compared to the bulk phases of the layer constituents, which improved the performance of thermoelectric device. It is also

found that in the ZnSe/Si and ZnSe/Ge superlattices [26], the fundamental energy gaps increase with the decreasing superlattice period and that the silicon or/and germanium layer plays an important role in Momelotinib in vivo determining the fundamental energy gap of the superlattices due to the spatial quantum confinement effect. Hence, the studies of these hybrid materials should be important for designing promising nanotechnology devices. In the present work, the structural and electronic properties of superlattices made with alternate stacking of germanene and silicene layers with MoS2 monolayer (labeled as Ger/MoS2 and Sil/MoS2, respectively) are systematically investigated by using a density functional theory calculation with the van der Waals (vdW) correction.