Transition-Metal Pentatelluride ZrTe 5 and HfTe 5 : A Paradigm for Large-Gap Quantum Spin Hall Insulators

By H. Weng, X. Dai, Z. Fang. 2013

307 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Quantum spin Hall (QSH) insulators, a new class of quantum matter, can support topologically protected helical edge modes inside a bulk insulating gap, which can lead to dissipationless transport. A major obstacle to reaching a wide application of QSH is the lack of suitable QSH compounds, which should be easily fabricated and have a large bulk gap. Here, we predict that single-layer ZrTe5 and HfTe5 are the most promising candidates for large-gap insulators, with a bulk direct (indirect) band gap as large as 0.4 eV (0.1 eV) and which are robust against external strains. The three-dimensional crystals of these two materials are good layered compounds with very weak interlayer bonding, and they are located near the phase boundary between weak and strong topological insulators, paving a new way for future experimental studies on both the QSH effect and topological phase transitions.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Materials Chemistry, Physical and Theoretical Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/388de2e6b36998864c31f834906f424ea16c00b0

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The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. Ashvin Vishwanath
2. N. P. Armitage
3. E. Mele
4. Hsin Lin
5. Arun Bansil
6. J. Venderbos
7. Tanmoy Das
8. H. Weng

In Materials Chemistry

1. Ashvin Vishwanath
2. N. P. Armitage
3. Hsin Lin
4. Arun Bansil
5. E. Mele
6. Tanmoy Das
7. H. Weng
8. Z. Fang

In Physical and Theoretical Chemistry

1. Jeffrey B. Neaton

Citations in the corpus

• Colloquium : Topological band theory (2016, background): “…Zintl compounds Sr2X (X=Pb, Sn) (Sun et al. 2011); (v) Single-layer ZrTe5 and HfTe5 in layered structure as 2D TIs with band gap as large as 0.4 eV (Weng, Dai, and Fang 2014); (vi) β-GaS and GaS-II family under uniaxial strain (Huang, Zhang, et al. 2013); and (vii) Cs(Sn,Pb,Ge)(Cl,Br,I)3 ternary…”
• Weyl and Dirac semimetals in three-dimensional solids (2017, background): “This system is believed to be close to a band touching transition (Weng et al., 2014) and may be very sensitive to materials preparation.”
• Detection of sub-MeV dark matter with three-dimensional Dirac materials (2017, result): “band structure show a Dirac cone near without spin-orbit coupling which is then slightly gapped (to 35 meV) with the inclusion of the spin-orbit interaction, consistent with previous DFT calculations [134,135]. We note that although DFT-GGA-SO is not expected to be qualitative for the band gap, our ”
• Evidence for Topological Edge States in a Large Energy Gap near the Step Edges on the Surface of ZrTe 5 (2016, methodology): “4%) will tune the material from strong TI to weak TI [24].”
• Topological Semimetals from First Principles (2018, background): “First-principles calculations have predicted that this type of Dirac semimetal should occur in the materials ZrTe5 (53) and SrSn2As2 (54), but its experimental verification has proven difficult (55, 56, 57, 58) as a result of sensitivity to factors such as temperature, pressure, and composition homo”