Planar Hall effect from the surface of topological insulators

A prominent feature of topological insulators (TIs) is the surface states comprising of spin-nondegenerate massless Dirac fermions. Recent technical advances have made it possible to address the surface transport properties of TI thin films by tuning the Fermi levels of both top and bottom surfaces....

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Autores principales: Taskin, A. A., Legg, Henry F., Yang, Fan, Sasaki, Satoshi, Kanai, Yasushi, Matsumoto, Kazuhiko, Rosch, Achim, Ando, Yoichi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2017
Materias:
Article
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5673905/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29109397
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01474-8
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author Taskin, A. A.
Legg, Henry F.
Yang, Fan
Sasaki, Satoshi
Kanai, Yasushi
Matsumoto, Kazuhiko
Rosch, Achim
Ando, Yoichi
author_facet Taskin, A. A.
Legg, Henry F.
Yang, Fan
Sasaki, Satoshi
Kanai, Yasushi
Matsumoto, Kazuhiko
Rosch, Achim
Ando, Yoichi
author_sort Taskin, A. A.
collection PubMed
description A prominent feature of topological insulators (TIs) is the surface states comprising of spin-nondegenerate massless Dirac fermions. Recent technical advances have made it possible to address the surface transport properties of TI thin films by tuning the Fermi levels of both top and bottom surfaces. Here we report our discovery of a novel planar Hall effect (PHE) from the TI surface, which results from a hitherto-unknown resistivity anisotropy induced by an in-plane magnetic field. This effect is observed in dual-gated devices of bulk-insulating Bi(2−x)Sb(x)Te(3) thin films, where the field-induced anisotropy presents a strong dependence on the gate voltage with a characteristic two-peak structure near the Dirac point. The origin of PHE is the peculiar time-reversal-breaking effect of an in-plane magnetic field, which anisotropically lifts the protection of surface Dirac fermions from backscattering. The observed PHE provides a useful tool to analyze and manipulate the topological protection of the TI surface.
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spelling pubmed-56739052017-11-09 Planar Hall effect from the surface of topological insulators Taskin, A. A. Legg, Henry F. Yang, Fan Sasaki, Satoshi Kanai, Yasushi Matsumoto, Kazuhiko Rosch, Achim Ando, Yoichi Nat Commun Article A prominent feature of topological insulators (TIs) is the surface states comprising of spin-nondegenerate massless Dirac fermions. Recent technical advances have made it possible to address the surface transport properties of TI thin films by tuning the Fermi levels of both top and bottom surfaces. Here we report our discovery of a novel planar Hall effect (PHE) from the TI surface, which results from a hitherto-unknown resistivity anisotropy induced by an in-plane magnetic field. This effect is observed in dual-gated devices of bulk-insulating Bi(2−x)Sb(x)Te(3) thin films, where the field-induced anisotropy presents a strong dependence on the gate voltage with a characteristic two-peak structure near the Dirac point. The origin of PHE is the peculiar time-reversal-breaking effect of an in-plane magnetic field, which anisotropically lifts the protection of surface Dirac fermions from backscattering. The observed PHE provides a useful tool to analyze and manipulate the topological protection of the TI surface. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-11-07 /pmc/articles/PMC5673905/ /pubmed/29109397 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01474-8 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 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 license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license 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 license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Taskin, A. A.
Legg, Henry F.
Yang, Fan
Sasaki, Satoshi
Kanai, Yasushi
Matsumoto, Kazuhiko
Rosch, Achim
Ando, Yoichi
Planar Hall effect from the surface of topological insulators
title Planar Hall effect from the surface of topological insulators
title_full Planar Hall effect from the surface of topological insulators
title_fullStr Planar Hall effect from the surface of topological insulators
title_full_unstemmed Planar Hall effect from the surface of topological insulators
title_short Planar Hall effect from the surface of topological insulators
title_sort planar hall effect from the surface of topological insulators
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5673905/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29109397
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01474-8
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