Title
Magnetic field-induced helical mode and topological transitions in a topological insulator nanoribbon
Date Issued
01 April 2016
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Purdue University
Publisher(s)
Nature Publishing Group
Abstract
The spin-helical Dirac fermion topological surface states in a topological insulator nanowire or nanoribbon promise novel topological devices and exotic physics such as Majorana fermions. Here, we report local and non-local transport measurements in Bi2Te3 topological insulator nanoribbons that exhibit quasi-ballistic transport over ∼2 μm. The conductance versus axial magnetic flux φ exhibits Aharonov-Bohm oscillations with maxima occurring alternately at half-integer or integer flux quanta (φ 0 = h/e, where h is Planck's constant and e is the electron charge) depending periodically on the gate-tuned Fermi wavevector (k F) with period 2π/C (where C is the nanoribbon circumference). The conductance versus gate voltage also exhibits k F -periodic oscillations, anti-correlated between φ = 0 and φ 0 /2. These oscillations enable us to probe the Bi2Te3 band structure, and are consistent with the circumferentially quantized topological surface states forming a series of one-dimensional subbands, which undergo periodic magnetic field-induced topological transitions with the disappearance/appearance of the gapless Dirac point with a one-dimensional spin helical mode.
Start page
345
End page
351
Volume
11
Issue
4
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Nano-materiales
Nano-procesos
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84954485262
Source
Nature Nanotechnology
ISSN of the container
17483387
Sponsor(s)
TI material synthesis, characterization and part of the magneto-transport studies were supported by a DARPA MESO programme (grant no. N66001-11-1-4107). Part of the FET fabrication and characterizations were supported by Intel Corporation. The later stage of this work at Purdue was also supported in part by the National Science Foundation (DMR-1410942). L.A.J. acknowledges support by an Intel PhD fellowship and a Purdue Center for Topological Materials fellowship. L.P.R. was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under Award Number DE-SC-0008630. Y.P.C. and L.A.J. thank M. Franz, J.H. Bardarson, T. Kubis and F.W. Chen for discussions.
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus