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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...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Nechaev, I. A., Eremeev, S. V., Krasovskii, E. E., Echenique, P. M., Chulkov, E. V.
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
Descripción
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.