TY - JOUR
T1 - Independence of topological surface state and bulk conductance in three-dimensional topological insulators
AU - Cai, Shu
AU - Guo, Jing
AU - Sidorov, Vladimir A.
AU - Zhou, Yazhou
AU - Wang, Honghong
AU - Lin, Gongchang
AU - Li, Xiaodong
AU - Li, Yanchuan
AU - Yang, Ke
AU - Li, Aiguo
AU - Wu, Qi
AU - Hu, Jiangping
AU - Kushwaha, Satya K.
AU - Cava, Robert J.
AU - Sun, Liling
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Profs. Hongming Weng, Qianghua Wang, N. Phuan Ong, Yi Zhou, and Dr. Chongchong Le for helpful discussions. R.J.C. would like to thank Gene Mele for a conversation several years ago about the expected behavior of the bulk band gap in topological insulators under pressure, initially motivating this experiment. The work in China was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFA0302900, 2016YFA0300300 and 2017YFA0303103), the NSF of China (Grants No. 11427805, No. U1532267, No. 11604376), the Strategic Priority Research Program (B) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB25000000). The work at Princeton was supported by the ARO MURI on Topological Insulators, grant W911NF-12-1-0461.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, The Author(s).
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - The archetypical 3D topological insulators Bi2Se3, Bi2Te3, and Sb2Te3 commonly exhibit high bulk conductivities, hindering the characterization of the surface state charge transport. The optimally doped topological insulators Bi2Te2Se and Bi2−xSbxTe2S, however, allow for such characterizations to be made. Here we report an experimental comparison of the conductance for the topological surface and bulk states in Bi2Te2Se and Bi1.1Sb0.9Te2S, based on temperature-dependent high-pressure measurements. We find that the surface state conductance at low temperature remains constant in the face of orders of magnitude increase in the bulk state conductance, revealing in a straightforward way that the topological surface states and bulk states are decoupled at low temperatures, consistent with theoretical models, and confirming topological insulators to be an excellent venue for studying charge transport in 2D Dirac electron systems.
AB - The archetypical 3D topological insulators Bi2Se3, Bi2Te3, and Sb2Te3 commonly exhibit high bulk conductivities, hindering the characterization of the surface state charge transport. The optimally doped topological insulators Bi2Te2Se and Bi2−xSbxTe2S, however, allow for such characterizations to be made. Here we report an experimental comparison of the conductance for the topological surface and bulk states in Bi2Te2Se and Bi1.1Sb0.9Te2S, based on temperature-dependent high-pressure measurements. We find that the surface state conductance at low temperature remains constant in the face of orders of magnitude increase in the bulk state conductance, revealing in a straightforward way that the topological surface states and bulk states are decoupled at low temperatures, consistent with theoretical models, and confirming topological insulators to be an excellent venue for studying charge transport in 2D Dirac electron systems.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41535-018-0134-z
DO - 10.1038/s41535-018-0134-z
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85057101773
SN - 2397-4648
VL - 3
JO - npj Quantum Materials
JF - npj Quantum Materials
IS - 1
M1 - 62
ER -