Electronic Transport in Bi₂Se₃ Thin Films in the Topological Insulator Regime

Date: Thursday, December 20th

Time: 10:00 am

Place: 5310 Chamberlin

Speaker: Dohun Kim, University of Maryland

Abstract: The 3D topological insulators (TIs) have an insulating bulk but metallic surface states stemming from band inversion due to strong spin-orbit interaction, whose existence is guaranteed by the topology of the band structure of the insulator. Like graphene, the STI surface state generically has a Dirac electronic spectrum with massless electrons and a vanishing bandgap at a Dirac point. In this talk, I will discuss experiments on the TI material Bi₂Se₃, which has a single topological Dirac surface state. Field effect transistors consisting of thin (5-17 nm) Bi₂Se₃ are fabricated by mechanical exfoliation of single crystals, and electrochemical and/or chemical gating methods are used to move the Fermi energy into the bulk bandgap, revealing the ambipolar gapless nature of transport in the Bi₂Se₃ surface states [1]. The minimum conductivity of the topological surface state is understood within the self-consistent theory of Dirac electrons in the presence of charged impurities. The intrinsic finite-temperature resistivity of the topological surface state due to electron-acoustic phonon scattering is measured to be 60 times larger than that of graphene largely due to the smaller Fermi and sound velocities in Bi₂Se₃ [2], which will have implications for topological electronic devices operating at room temperature. I will also discuss about our recent observation of 2D weak anti-localization (WAL) behavior in the low field magneto transport, which stems from topological surface states. By investigating gate-tuned WAL behaviors, I will show that WAL in TI regime is extraordinarily sensitive to sub-meV coupling between top and bottom topological surfaces, and interplay of phase coherence time and inter surface tunneling time results interesting crossovers from coupled single channel to decoupled multichannel coherent transports.

[1] D. Kim et al., Nature Phys. 8, 460 (2012).
[2] D. Kim et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 166801 (2012).

Host: Eriksson

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