Cargando…
Quantum spin Hall insulators in centrosymmetric thin films composed from topologically trivial BiTeI trilayers
The quantum spin Hall insulators predicted ten years ago and now experimentally observed are instrumental for a break- through in nanoelectronics due to non-dissipative spin-polarized electron transport through their edges. For this transport to persist at normal conditions, the insulators should po...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group
2017
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5333630/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28252656 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep43666 |
Sumario: | The quantum spin Hall insulators predicted ten years ago and now experimentally observed are instrumental for a break- through in nanoelectronics due to non-dissipative spin-polarized electron transport through their edges. For this transport to persist at normal conditions, the insulators should possess a sufficiently large band gap in a stable topological phase. Here, we theoretically show that quantum spin Hall insulators can be realized in ultra-thin films constructed from a trivial band insulator with strong spin-orbit coupling. The thinnest film with an inverted gap large enough for practical applications is a centrosymmetric sextuple layer built out of two inversely stacked non-centrosymmetric BiTeI trilayers. This nontrivial sextuple layer turns out to be the structure element of an artificially designed strong three-dimensional topological insulator Bi(2)Te(2)I(2). We reveal general principles of how a topological insulator can be composed from the structure elements of the BiTeX family (X = I, Br, Cl), which opens new perspectives towards engineering of topological phases. |
---|