Investigation on the effect of tensile and compressive strain on the electronic structure of silicene using the density functional theory

We investigate the effect of tensile and compressive strain on the electronic structure of silicene using the density functional theory as implemented in the Quantum Espresso software. It was found that a tensile strain of about 7% induces a semimetal-metal transition. Such a transition also occurs for 5% applied compressive strain. Furthermore, an approximately linear relationship between an increasing strain and conduction (valence) band-Fermi energy difference was obtained for both types of strain.