Infrared to ultraviolet optical response for armchair-edge silicene nanoribbons

We investigate the infrared to ultraviolet optical response for perfect armchair-edge silicene nanoribbons (N-ASiNRs) with N atomic chains under the irradiation of an external electromagnetic field at low temperatures, in the method of dipole-transition theorem for semiconductors. The electronic structure for N-ASiNRs has been manifested from the tight-binding calculations to two distinct families, that is the semiconducting one for $$N=3l$$ or $$3l+1$$ (l is a positive integer) and metallic one for $$N=3l+2$$ . The dipole-transition probabilities from the valence subbands to the smaller indexed conduction ones for semiconducting 9-/10- and metallic 11-ASiNRs have been demonstrated to be continuously increasing, while those to the larger indexed conduction subbands are firstly increasing and then decreasing. Both the semiconducting 9-/10- and metallic 11-ASiNRs have been found to have a wide (from 0.50 to 3.20 eV) absorption spectrum, refractive index, and extinction coefficient at the vicinity of K-point. The optical response for semiconducting 9-/10-ASiNRs is observed to be from the transitions between the valence and conduction subbands with the same and/or different indices, while that for metallic 11-ASiNR may be originated from the different indexed valence and conduction subbands. The obtained results are believed to be of importance in the design of the silicene-based nano-optoelectronic devices.