Hg-Based Epitaxial Materials for Topological Insulators
Abstract
Topological insulators (TI) stand as a new class of materials in which spin-orbit interaction produces topologically nontrivial insulating bulk electronic phases and conducting material boundaries. These boundary regions show complex spin textures and have properties that are unlike any other known 2D electronic systems with foreseen applications ranging from topological superconductors and spintronics to quantum computation. Recent trends in TI consist in searching for new candidate 2D materials like heavy element (high Z) magnetic TI. In particular, diluted magnetic semiconductors such as Hg(1-x)M(x)VI, where M is a transition metal (e.g., Mn, Fe, Cr) and VI is a Group VI element (e.g., Te, Se), are of special interest due to their variable band-gap and excellent electronic-transport and optical properties. In this study, TI structures were made by sandwiching a thin layer of Hg-based material between Cd(Zn)Te substrates and cover layer of CdTe. Several geometries and compositions were produced with controllable topological structure using both vapor-phase epitaxy and liquid-phase epitaxy, along with associated microstructural characterization. Samples were provided to the Air Force Research Laboratory for investigation of properties.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 01, 2014
- Accession Number
- ADA605694
Entities
People
- Ernesto Dieguez
- Mykola Sochynskyi
Organizations
- Autonomous University of Madrid