Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2016

College/Unit

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department/Program/Center

Physics and Astronomy

Abstract

Topological crystalline insulators are a type of topological insulators whose topological surface states are protected by a crystal symmetry, thus the surface gap can be tuned by applying strain or an electric field. In this paper we predict by means of ab initio calculations a new phase of Bi which is a topological crystalline insulator characterized by a mirror Chern number nM =−2, but not a Z2 strong topological insulator. This system presents an exceptional property: at the (001) surface its Dirac cones are pinned at the surface high-symmetry points. As a consequence they are also protected by time-reversal symmetry and can survive against weak disorder even if in-plane mirror symmetry is broken at the surface. Taking advantage of this dual protection, we present a strategy to tune the band-gap based on a topological phase transition unique to this system. Since the spin-texture of these topological surface states reduces the back-scattering in carrier transport, this effective band-engineering is expected to be suitable for electronic and optoelectronic devices with reduced dissipation

Source Citation

Munoz, F., Vergniory, M. G., Rauch, T., Henk, J., Chulkov, E. V., Mertig, I., … Romero, A. H. (2016). Topological Crystalline Insulator in a New Bi Semiconducting Phase. Scientific Reports, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep21790

Comments

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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