Topological dislocation response in elementary semiconductors

2026/02/25 by Anonymous, Yuteng Zhou, Alexandre Chaduteau +1
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Microstructure and mechanical properties #Surface and Thin Film Phenomena #Topological Materials and Phenomena #cond-mat.mes-hall

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/yg53-t56x

published as Phys. Rev. B 114, L051302 (2026)

arxiv created 2026/02/25 · openalex publication_date 2026/07/09 · openalex created_date 2026/07/10 · arxiv updated 2026/07/31 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

We study elementary semiconductors and insulators that are symmetric under spatial inversion: silicon, diamond, germanium, and black phosphorene. These materials are ideal candidates for realizing obstructed atomic insulators, which differ from trivial atomic insulators by a quantized spatial shift of their electronic Wannier centers with respect to the atomic lattice. We use symmetry indicator invariants that allow the prediction of nontrivial responses to crystal dislocations with an integer Burgers vector in these materials, and generally, in all inversion-symmetric obstructed atomic insulators. Unlike weak topological insulators where the response only depends on the Burgers vector, the dislocation response of three-dimensional (3D) inversion-symmetric obstructed atomic insulators can also be affected by the line vector of the dislocation. In such insulators, we find that edge dislocations generically exhibit a nontrivial response, while in all 3D obstructed atomic insulators, screw dislocations always display a trivial response. With the aid of numerical simulations of realistic tight-binding models, we confirm the presence of midgap polarization bands localized along dislocations in silicon, diamond, and germanium.

Citations

• Local expression of fractional corner charges in obstructed atomic insulators and its application to vertex-transitive polyhedra with arbitrary genus
• Observation of non-Hermitian dislocation bound states and dislocation skin effects
• Two-dimensional orbital-obstructed insulators with higher-order band topology
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• Dislocation Majorana Bound States in Iron-based Superconductors
• Three-Dimensional Real Space Invariants, Obstructed Atomic Insulators and A New Principle for Active Catalytic Sites
• Filling-Enforced Obstructed Atomic Insulators
• Topological insulators with inversion symmetry
• Stable real-space invariants and topology beyond symmetry indicators

Related

• Dislocations as natural quantum wires in Diamond
• Ordinary lattice defects as probes of topology
• Emergent Electronic Flat Bands Through Dislocation Defect Phase Patterning: Effective One-Dimensional Model
• The two dimensional local density of states of a Topological Insulator with an edge dislocation
• Weak indices and dislocations in general topological band structures