Quantum spin Hall insulators in centrosymmetric thin films composed from topologically trivial BiTeI trilayers

2016/07/31 by I. A. Nechaev, S. V. Eremeev, E. E. Krasovskii +2 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.mtrl-sci

paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/srep43666

published as Scientific Reports 7, 43666 (2017) · 6 pages, 4 figures

arxiv created 2017/03/29 · arxiv updated 2017/03/30

Abstract

The quantum spin Hall insulators predicted ten years ago and now experimentally observed are instrumental for a breakthrough in nanoelectronics due to non-dissipative spin-polarized electron transport through their edges. For this transport to persist at normal conditions, the insulators should possess a sufficiently large band gap in a stable topological phase. Here, we theoretically show that quantum spin Hall insulators can be realized in ultra-thin films constructed from a trivial band insulator with strong spin-orbit coupling. The thinnest film with an inverted gap large enough for practical applications is a centrosymmetric sextuple layer built out of two inversely stacked non-centrosymmetric BiTeI trilayers. This nontrivial sextuple layer turns out to be the structure element of an artificially designed strong three-dimensional topological insulator Bi₂Te₂I₂. We reveal general principles of how a topological insulator can be composed from the structure elements of the BiTeX family (X=I, Br, Cl), which opens new perspectives towards engineering of topological phases.

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