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Axion insulator state in hundred-nanometer-thick magnetic topological insulator sandwich heterostructures
An axion insulator is a three-dimensional (3D) topological insulator (TI), in which the bulk maintains the time-reversal symmetry or inversion symmetry but the surface states are gapped by surface magnetization. The axion insulator state has been observed in molecular beam epitaxy (MBE)-grown magnet...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10663498/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37989754 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43474-x |
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author | Zhuo, Deyi Yan, Zi-Jie Sun, Zi-Ting Zhou, Ling-Jie Zhao, Yi-Fan Zhang, Ruoxi Mei, Ruobing Yi, Hemian Wang, Ke Chan, Moses H. W. Liu, Chao-Xing Law, K. T. Chang, Cui-Zu |
author_facet | Zhuo, Deyi Yan, Zi-Jie Sun, Zi-Ting Zhou, Ling-Jie Zhao, Yi-Fan Zhang, Ruoxi Mei, Ruobing Yi, Hemian Wang, Ke Chan, Moses H. W. Liu, Chao-Xing Law, K. T. Chang, Cui-Zu |
author_sort | Zhuo, Deyi |
collection | PubMed |
description | An axion insulator is a three-dimensional (3D) topological insulator (TI), in which the bulk maintains the time-reversal symmetry or inversion symmetry but the surface states are gapped by surface magnetization. The axion insulator state has been observed in molecular beam epitaxy (MBE)-grown magnetically doped TI sandwiches and exfoliated intrinsic magnetic TI MnBi(2)Te(4) flakes with an even number layer. All these samples have a thickness of ~ 10 nm, near the 2D-to-3D boundary. The coupling between the top and bottom surface states in thin samples may hinder the observation of quantized topological magnetoelectric response. Here, we employ MBE to synthesize magnetic TI sandwich heterostructures and find that the axion insulator state persists in a 3D sample with a thickness of ~ 106 nm. Our transport results show that the axion insulator state starts to emerge when the thickness of the middle undoped TI layer is greater than ~ 3 nm. The 3D hundred-nanometer-thick axion insulator provides a promising platform for the exploration of the topological magnetoelectric effect and other emergent magnetic topological states, such as the high-order TI phase. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10663498 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-106634982023-11-21 Axion insulator state in hundred-nanometer-thick magnetic topological insulator sandwich heterostructures Zhuo, Deyi Yan, Zi-Jie Sun, Zi-Ting Zhou, Ling-Jie Zhao, Yi-Fan Zhang, Ruoxi Mei, Ruobing Yi, Hemian Wang, Ke Chan, Moses H. W. Liu, Chao-Xing Law, K. T. Chang, Cui-Zu Nat Commun Article An axion insulator is a three-dimensional (3D) topological insulator (TI), in which the bulk maintains the time-reversal symmetry or inversion symmetry but the surface states are gapped by surface magnetization. The axion insulator state has been observed in molecular beam epitaxy (MBE)-grown magnetically doped TI sandwiches and exfoliated intrinsic magnetic TI MnBi(2)Te(4) flakes with an even number layer. All these samples have a thickness of ~ 10 nm, near the 2D-to-3D boundary. The coupling between the top and bottom surface states in thin samples may hinder the observation of quantized topological magnetoelectric response. Here, we employ MBE to synthesize magnetic TI sandwich heterostructures and find that the axion insulator state persists in a 3D sample with a thickness of ~ 106 nm. Our transport results show that the axion insulator state starts to emerge when the thickness of the middle undoped TI layer is greater than ~ 3 nm. The 3D hundred-nanometer-thick axion insulator provides a promising platform for the exploration of the topological magnetoelectric effect and other emergent magnetic topological states, such as the high-order TI phase. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-11-21 /pmc/articles/PMC10663498/ /pubmed/37989754 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43474-x Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Zhuo, Deyi Yan, Zi-Jie Sun, Zi-Ting Zhou, Ling-Jie Zhao, Yi-Fan Zhang, Ruoxi Mei, Ruobing Yi, Hemian Wang, Ke Chan, Moses H. W. Liu, Chao-Xing Law, K. T. Chang, Cui-Zu Axion insulator state in hundred-nanometer-thick magnetic topological insulator sandwich heterostructures |
title | Axion insulator state in hundred-nanometer-thick magnetic topological insulator sandwich heterostructures |
title_full | Axion insulator state in hundred-nanometer-thick magnetic topological insulator sandwich heterostructures |
title_fullStr | Axion insulator state in hundred-nanometer-thick magnetic topological insulator sandwich heterostructures |
title_full_unstemmed | Axion insulator state in hundred-nanometer-thick magnetic topological insulator sandwich heterostructures |
title_short | Axion insulator state in hundred-nanometer-thick magnetic topological insulator sandwich heterostructures |
title_sort | axion insulator state in hundred-nanometer-thick magnetic topological insulator sandwich heterostructures |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10663498/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37989754 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43474-x |
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