Tunable multifunctional topological insulators in ternary Heusler compounds.

By S. Chadov, Xiao-Liang Qi, J. Kübler, G. Fecher, Claudia Felser, Shoucheng Zhang. 2010

761 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recently the quantum spin Hall effect was theoretically predicted and experimentally realized in quantum wells based on the binary semiconductor HgTe (refs 1-3). The quantum spin Hall state and topological insulators are new states of quantum matter interesting for both fundamental condensed-matter physics and material science. Many Heusler compounds with C1(b) structure are ternary semiconductors that are structurally and electronically related to the binary semiconductors. The diversity of Heusler materials opens wide possibilities for tuning the bandgap and setting the desired band inversion by choosing compounds with appropriate hybridization strength (by the lattice parameter) and magnitude of spin-orbit coupling (by the atomic charge). Based on first-principle calculations we demonstrate that around 50 Heusler compounds show band inversion similar to that of HgTe. The topological state in these zero-gap semiconductors can be created by applying strain or by designing an appropriate quantum-well structure, similar to the case of HgTe. Many of these ternary zero-gap semiconductors (LnAuPb, LnPdBi, LnPtSb and LnPtBi) contain the rare-earth element Ln, which can realize additional properties ranging from superconductivity (for example LaPtBi; ref. 12) to magnetism (for example GdPtBi; ref. 13) and heavy fermion behaviour (for example YbPtBi; ref. 14). These properties can open new research directions in realizing the quantized anomalous Hall effect and topological superconductors.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Materials Chemistry

How researchers see this paper

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

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

In Materials Chemistry

Citations in the corpus

Learning atoms for materials discovery (2018, methodology): “4D, we compare the logistic regression model using our atom vectors with the famous 18electron rule (28).”
Topological Semimetals from First Principles (2018, background): “Since HgTe is structurally related to the half-Heusler compounds (the latter crystallize in a stuffed zincblende structure) and have similar electronic structure (159), subsequent work expanded the search for triple-point semimetals to this material class (160).”
Heusler Compounds—A Material Class With Exceptional Properties (2011, background): “Very recently, the discovery of topological insulators, a new quantum state of matter, opened the door to technologies of the future with unimagined possibilities for Heusler compounds [ 11 ], [12].”
Colloquium : Topological band theory (2016, background): “1 Ternary half-Heusler compounds Chemically, the ternary half-Heuslers, MM’X, for M = (Lu, La, Sc, Y) and M’X = (PtBi, AuPb, PdBi, PtSb, AuSn, NiBi, PdSb), involve a total of 18 valence electrons per formula unit obtained by combining ten d orbitals of M’ atom with two s- and six p-orbitals of the X”
Weyl and Dirac semimetals in three-dimensional solids (2017, background): “Their band gaps can be tuned over a wide energy range by choosing different XYZ combinations and have been proposed to host a variety of topological states (Al-Sawai et al., 2010; Chadov et al., 2010; Lin et al., 2010; Xiao et al., 2010b).”