Search results for "topological insulator"
showing 10 items of 74 documents
Topological Insulators from a Chemist’s Perspective
2012
Topology and chemistry are deeply entangled subjects, whichmanifests in the way chemists like to think and approachproblems. Although not at first glance, topology allows thecategorizationoffundamentalinherentpropertiesofthehugenumber of different chemical compounds, carving out theunique features of a class of materials of different complexity,a topic which Turro worked out in his treatise on geometricaland topological thinking in chemistry.
Floquet engineering of magnetism in topological insulator thin films
2023
Dynamic manipulation of magnetism in topological materials is demonstrated here via a Floquet engineering approach using circularly polarized light. Increasing the strength of the laser field, besides the expected topological phase transition, the magnetically doped topological insulator thin film also undergoes a magnetic phase transition from ferromagnetism to paramagnetism, whose critical behavior strongly depends on the quantum quenching. In sharp contrast to the equilibrium case, the non-equilibrium Curie temperatures vary for different time scale and experimental setup, not all relying on change of topology. Our discoveries deepen the understanding of the relationship between topology…
Prediction of Weak Topological Insulators in Layered Semiconductors
2012
We report the discovery of weak topological insulators by ab initio calculations in a honeycomb lattice. We propose a structure with an odd number of layers in the primitive unit-cell as a prerequisite for forming weak topological insulators. Here, the single-layered KHgSb is the most suitable candidate for its large bulk energy gap of 0.24 eV. Its side surface hosts metallic surface states, forming two anisotropic Dirac cones. Though the stacking of even-layered structures leads to trivial insulators, the structures can host a quantum spin Hall layer with a large bulk gap, if an additional single layer exists as a stacking fault in the crystal. The reported honeycomb compounds can serve as…
Heusler Compounds—A Material Class With Exceptional Properties
2011
The class of Heusler compounds, including the XYZ and the X2YZ compounds, has not only an endless number of members, but also a vast variety of properties can be found in this class of materials, ranging from semiconductors, half-metallic ferromagnets, superconductors, and topological insulators to shape memory alloys. With this review article, we would like to provide an overview of Heusler compounds, focusing on their structure, properties, and potential applications.
2021
The bosonic analogs of topological insulators have been proposed in numerous theoretical works, but their experimental realization is still very rare, especially for spin systems. Recently, two-dim...
Structural and electrical study of the topological insulator SnBi2Te4 at high pressures
2016
We report high-pressure X-ray diffraction and electrical measurements of the topological insulator SnBi2Te4 at room temperature. The pressure dependence of the structural properties of the most stable phase of SnBi2Te4 at ambient conditions (trigonal phase) have been experimentally determined and compared with results of our ab initio calculations. Furthermore, a comparison of SnBi2Te4 with the parent compound Bi2Te3 shows that the central TeSnTe trilayer, which substitutes the Te layer at the center of the TeBiTeBiTe layers of Bi2Te3, plays a minor role in the compression of SnBi2Te4. Similar to Bi2Te3, our resistance measurements and electronic band structure simulations in SnBi2Te4 at hi…
Trapping of three-dimensional electrons and transition to two-dimensional transport in the three-dimensional topological insulator Bi2Se3under high p…
2012
This paper reports an experimental and theoretical investigation on the electronic structure of bismuth selenide (Bi2Se3) up to 9 GPa. The optical gap of Bi2Se3 increases from 0.17 eV at ambient pressure to 0.45 eV at 8 GPa. The quenching of the Burstein-Moss effect in degenerate samples and the shift of the free-carrier plasma frequency to lower energies reveal a quick decrease of the bulk three-dimensional (3D) electron concentration under pressure. On increasing pressure the behavior of Hall electron concentration and mobility depends on the sample thickness, consistently with a gradual transition from mainly 3D transport at ambient pressure to mainly two-dimensional (2D) transport at hi…
Lieb polariton topological insulators
2018
We predict that the interplay between the spin-orbit coupling, stemming from the TE-TM energy splitting, and the Zeeman effect in semiconductor microcavities supporting exci- ton-polariton quasi-particles results in the appearance of unidirectional linear topological edge states when the top microcavity mirror is patterned to form a truncated dislocated Lieb lattice of cylindrical pillars. Periodic nonlinear edge states are found to emerge from the linear ones. They are strongly localized across the interface and they are remarkably robust in comparison to their counterparts in hexagonal lattices. Such robustness makes possible the existence of nested unidirectional dark solitons that move …
Creating stable Floquet–Weyl semimetals by laser-driving of 3D Dirac materials
2017
Nature Communications 8, 13940 (2017). doi:10.1038/ncomms13940