Closing the surface bandgap in thin Bi₂Se₃/Graphene heterostructures

Topological insulator (TI), a band insulator with topologically protected edge states, is one of the most interesting materials in the field of condensed matter. Bismuth selenide (Bi₂Se₃) is the most spotlighted three-dimensional TI material; it has a Dirac cone at each top and bottom surface and a relatively wide bandgap. For application, suppression of the bulk effect is crucial, but in ultrathin TI materials, with thicknesses less than 3 QL, the finite size effect works on the linear dispersion of the surface states, so that the surface band has a finite bandgap because of the hybridization between the top and bottom surface states and Rashba splitting, resulting from the structure inversion asymmetry. Here, we studied the gapless top surface Dirac state of strained 3 QL Bi₂Se₃/graphene heterostructures. A strain caused by the graphene layer reduces the bandgap of surface states, and the band bending resulting from the charge transfer at the Bi₂Se₃-graphene interface induces localization of surface states to each top and bottom layer to suppress the overlap of the two surface states. In addition, we verified the independent transport channel of the top surface Dirac state in Bi₂Se₃/graphene heterostructures by measuring the magneto-conductance. Our findings suggest that the strain and the proximity effect in TI/non-TI heterostructures may be feasible ways to engineer the topological surface states beyond the physical and topological thickness limit.