Multifunctional silicene/CeO2 heterojunctions: desirable electronic material and promising water-splitting photocatalyst

Abstract The first-principles calculations demonstrate that covalently bonded (cb) heterojunction and van der Waals (vdW) heterojunction can coexist in silicene/CeO2 heterojunctions, due to the different stacking patterns. Especially, the cb heterojunction with band gap of 1.97 eV, forms a type-II heterojunction, exhibits good redox performance and has high-effective optical absorption spectra, thus it is a promising photocatalyst for overall water splitting. Besides, for the vdW heterojunction, the Dirac cone of silicene is well kept on CeO2 semiconducting substrate, with a considerable energy gap of 0.43 eV, which can be an ideal material in building silicene-based electronic device. These results may open a new gateway in both of nanoelectronic device and energy conversion for silicene/CeO2 nanocomposites.