Vertical twinning of the Dirac cone at the interface between topological insulators and semiconductors

L. Seixas, D. West (), A. Fazzio and S. B. Zhang
Additional contact information
L. Seixas: Instituto de Física, Universidade de São Paulo, CP 66318, São Paulo 05315-970, Brazil
D. West: Applied Physics, and Astronomy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
A. Fazzio: Instituto de Física, Universidade de São Paulo, CP 66318, São Paulo 05315-970, Brazil
S. B. Zhang: Applied Physics, and Astronomy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Topological insulators are a new class of matter characterized by the unique electronic properties of an insulating bulk and metallic boundaries arising from non-trivial bulk band topology. While the surfaces of topological insulators have been well studied, the interface between topological insulators and semiconductors may not only be more technologically relevant, but the interaction with non-topological states may fundamentally alter the physics. Here, we present a general model to show that this type of interaction can lead to vertical twinning of the Dirac cone, whereby the hybridized non-spin-degenerate interfacial states cross twice as they span the bulk bandgap. This hybridization leads to spin–momentum locking of non-topological states with either helical (clockwise or anticlockwise) or even anti-helical (negative winding number) spin orientation depending on the parametization of the interaction. Model results are corroborated by first-principles calculations of the technologically relevant Bi2Se3 film van der Waals bound to a Se-treated GaAs substrate.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms8630 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms8630

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8630

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().