Tunable dwell time in gated silicene nanostructures

Abstract

Residing on the gate-tunable electronic properties of silicene, we have systematically examined the dwell time for quantum tunneling through the single and multiple-gated silicene nanostructures. It is shown that unlike the graphene, superluminal tunneling is observable even at the normal incidence due to the sizeable spin–orbit gap of silicene. Together with its field-tunable bandgap, we show that this superluminal tunneling can be further flexibly switched on and off via electric mean. By simulating the dwell time through the symmetric and asymmetric double barrier structures, it is also shown here that the dwell time displays the distinct dependence on the former and latter barrier profiles. Those observations provide some favorable strategies to experimentally examine and fundamentally understand the time-dependent aspect of tunneling in solid state nanosystems.