Discovery of a single topological Dirac fermion in the strong inversion asymmetric compound BiTeCl

Y. L. Chen, M. Kanou, Z. K. Liu, H. J. Zhang, J. A. Sobota, D. Leuenberger, S. K. Mo, B. Zhou, S. L. Yang, P. S. Kirchmann, D. H. Lu, R. G. Moore, Z. Hussain, Z. X. Shen, X. L. Qi, T. Sasagawa

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Abstract

In the past few years, a new state of quantum matter known as the time-reversal-invariant topological insulator has been predicted theoretically and realized experimentally. All of the topological insulators discovered so far in experiment are inversion symmetric - except for strained HgTe, which has weak inversion asymmetry, a small bulk gap but no bulk charge polarization. Strong inversion asymmetry in topological insulators would not only lead to many interesting phenomena, such as crystalline-surface-dependent topological electronic states, pyroelectricity and intrinsic topological p-n junctions, but would also serve as an ideal platform for the realization of topological magneto-electric effects, which result from the modification of Maxwell equations in topological insulators. Here we report the discovery of a strong inversion asymmetric topological insulator phase in BiTeCl by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, which reveals Dirac surface states and crystalline-surface-dependent electronic structures. Moreover, we observe a tenfold increase of the bulk energy gap in BiTeCl over the weak inversion asymmetric topological insulator HgTe, making it a promising platform for topological phenomena and possible applications at high temperature.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)704-708
Number of pages5
JournalNature Physics
Volume9
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2013
Externally publishedYes

Funding

We thank Z. Wang and C. X. Liu for the helpful discussion. Y.L.C. acknowledges support from a DARPA MESO project (No. N66001-11-1-4105) and the EPSRC First Grant (EP/K04074X/1). B.Z., Z.K.L., Z.X.S. and X.L.Q. acknowledge support from Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Science (contract DE-AC02-76SF00515). T.S. acknowledges support from MEXT, Japan (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B), No. 24340078). H.J.Z. acknowledges support from the Army Research Office (No. W911NF-09-1-0508). J.A.S. acknowledges support from the Stanford Graduate Fellowship. D.L. acknowledges the Swiss National Science Foundation.

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