TY - JOUR
T1 - Novel family of chiral-based topological insulators
T2 - Elemental tellurium under strain
AU - Agapito, Luis A.
AU - Kioussis, Nicholas
AU - Goddard, William A.
AU - Ong, N. P.
PY - 2013/4/24
Y1 - 2013/4/24
N2 - Employing ab initio electronic structure calculations, we predict that trigonal tellurium consisting of weakly interacting helical chains undergoes a trivial insulator to strong topological insulator (metal) transition under shear (hydrostatic or uniaxial) strain. The transition is demonstrated by examining the strain evolution of the band structure, the topological Z2 invariant and the concomitant band inversion. The underlying mechanism is the depopulation of the lone-pair orbitals associated with the valence band via proper strain engineering. Thus, Te becomes the prototype of a novel family of chiral-based three-dimensional topological insulators with important implications in spintronics, magneto-optics, and thermoelectrics.
AB - Employing ab initio electronic structure calculations, we predict that trigonal tellurium consisting of weakly interacting helical chains undergoes a trivial insulator to strong topological insulator (metal) transition under shear (hydrostatic or uniaxial) strain. The transition is demonstrated by examining the strain evolution of the band structure, the topological Z2 invariant and the concomitant band inversion. The underlying mechanism is the depopulation of the lone-pair orbitals associated with the valence band via proper strain engineering. Thus, Te becomes the prototype of a novel family of chiral-based three-dimensional topological insulators with important implications in spintronics, magneto-optics, and thermoelectrics.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.176401
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.176401
M3 - Article
C2 - 23679748
AN - SCOPUS:84876737940
SN - 0031-9007
VL - 110
JO - Physical review letters
JF - Physical review letters
IS - 17
M1 - 176401
ER -