1998/10/01 by Michael Hilke, M. Hilke, D. Shahar +6 · 5 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Condensed matter physics #Electrical resistivity and conductivity #Electron #Graphene research and applications #Hall effect #Insulator (electricity) #Magnetic field #Magnetoresistance #Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum Hall effect #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum mechanics #Semiconductor #Thermal Hall effect #Transverse plane #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/27160
published as Nature, 395, p. 675-677 (1998) · 4 pages
openalex publication_date 1998/10/01 · arxiv created 1998/10/15 · arxiv updated 2015/06/25 · openalex created_date 2017/11/17 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Quite generally, an insulator is theoretically defined by a vanishing conductivity tensor at the absolute zero of temperature. In classical insulators, such as band insulators, vanishing conductivities lead to diverging resistivities. In other insulators, in particular when a high magnetic field (B) is added, it is possible that while the magneto-resistance diverges, the Hall resistance remains finite, which is known as a Hall insulator. In this letter we demonstrate experimentally the existence of another, more exotic, insulator. This insulator, which terminates the quantum Hall effect series in a two-dimensional electron system, is characterized by a Hall resistance which is approximately quantized in the quantum unit of resistance h/e2. This insulator is termed a quantized Hall insulator. In addition we show that for the same sample, the insulating state preceding the QHE series, at low-B, is of the HI kind.