No Arabic abstract
We report the magneto-conductivity analysis of Bi2Se3 single crystal at different temperatures in a magnetic field range of 14Tesla. The single crystals are grown by the self-flux method and characterized through X-ray diffraction, Scanning Electron Microscopy, and Raman Spectroscopy. The single crystals show magnetoresistance (MR) of around 380 percent at a magnetic field of 14T and a temperature of 5K. The Hikami Larkin Nagaoka (HLN) equation has been used to fit the magneto-conductivity (MC) data. However, the HLN fitted curve deviates at higher magnetic fields above 1 Tesla, suggesting that the role of surface driven conductivity suppresses with an increasing magnetic field. This article proposes a speculative model comprising of surface-driven HLN and added quantum diffusive and bulk carriers driven classical terms. The model successfully explains the MC of the Bi2Se3 single crystal at various temperatures (5 to 200K) and applied magnetic fields (up to 14Tesla).
The optical conductivity and the spectral weight of four topological insulators with increasing chemical compensation (Bi2Se3, Bi2-xCaxSe3, Bi2Se2Te, Bi2Te2Se) have been measured from 5 to 300 K and from sub-THz to visible frequencies. The effect of compensation is clearly observed in the infrared spectra, through the suppression of an extrinsic Drude term and the appearance of strong absorption peaks, that we assign to electronic transitions among localized states. From the far-infrared spectral weight of the most compensated sample (Bi2Te2Se) one can estimate a density of charge-carriers in the order of 10^17/cm^3 in good agreement with transport data. Those results demonstrate that the low-energy electrodynamics in single crystals of topological insulators, even at the highest degree of compensation presently achieved, is still affected by extrinsic charge excitations.
We report the magneto-conductivity analysis at different temperatures under magnetic field of up to 5Tesla of a well characterized Bi2Te3 crystal. Details of crystal growth and various physical properties including high linear magneto resistance are already reported by some of us. To elaborate upon the transport properties of Bi2Te3 crystal, the magneto conductivity is fitted to the known HLN (Hikami Larkin Nagaoka) equation and it is found that the conduction mechanism is dominated by both surface driven WAL (weak anti localization) and the bulk WL states. The value of HLN equation coefficient signifying the type of localization (WL, WAL or both WL and WAL) falls within the range of -0.5 to -1.5. In our case, the low field (0.25Tesla) fitting of studied crystal exhibited value close to -0.86 for studied temperatures of up to 50K, indicating both WAL and WL contributions. The phase coherence length is found to decrease from 98.266 to 40.314nm with increasing temperature. Summarily, the short letter reports the fact that bulk Bi2Te3 follows the HLN equation and quantitative analysis of the same facilitates to know the quality of studied crystal in terms of WAL to WL contributions and thus the surface to bulk conduction ratio.
We present a magneto-infrared spectroscopic study of thin Bi2Se3 single crystal flakes. Magneto-infrared transmittance and reflectance measurements are performed in the Faraday geometry at 4.2K in a magnetic field up to 17.5T. Thin Bi2Se3 flakes (much less than 1{mu}m thick) are stabilized on the Scotch tape, and the reduced thickness enables us to obtain appreciable far-infrared transmission through the highly reflective Bi2Se3 single crystals. A pronounced electron-phonon coupling is manifested as a Fano resonance at the {alpha} optical phonon mode in Bi2Se3, resulting from the quantum interference between the optical phonon mode and the continuum of the electronic states. However, the Fano resonance exhibits no systematic line broadening, in contrast to the earlier observation of a similar Fano resonance in Bi2Se3 using magneto-infrared reflectance spectroscopy.
The major breakthroughs in the understanding of topological materials over the past decade were all triggered by the discovery of the Z$_2$ topological insulator (TI). In three dimensions (3D), the TI is classified as either strong or weak, and experimental confirmations of the strong topological insulator (STI) rapidly followed the theoretical predictions. In contrast, the weak topological insulator has so far eluded experimental verification, since the topological surface states emerge only on particular side surfaces which are typically undetectable in real 3D crystals. Here we provide experimental evidence for the WTI state in a bismuth iodide, $beta$-Bi4I4. Significantly, the crystal has naturally cleavable top and side planes both stacked via van-der-Waals forces, which have long been desirable for the experimental realization of the WTI state. As a definitive signature of it, we find quasi-1D Dirac TSS at the side-surface (100) while the top-surface (001) is topologically dark. Furthermore, a crystal transition from the $beta$- to $alpha$-phase drives a topological phase transition from a nontrivial WTI to the trivial insulator around room temperature. This topological phase, viewed as quantum spin Hall (QSH) insulators stacked three-dimensionally, and excellent functionality with on/off switching will lay a foundation for new technology benefiting from highly directional spin-currents with large density protected against backscattering.
Recent progress in the field of topological states of matter(1,2) has largely been initiated by the discovery of bismuth and antimony chalcogenide bulk topological insulators (TIs)(3-6), followed by closely related ternary compounds(7-16) and predictions of several weak TIs(17-19). However, both the conceptual richness of Z$_2$ classification of TIs as well as their structural and compositional diversity are far from being fully exploited. Here, a new Z$_2$ topological insulator is theoretically predicted and experimentally confirmed in the $beta$-phase of quasi-one-dimensional bismuth iodide Bi$_4$I$_4$. The electronic structure of $beta$-Bi$_4$I$_4$, characterized by Z$_2$ invariants (1;110), is in proximity of both the weak TI phase (0;001) and the trivial insulator phase (0;000). Our angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurements on the (001) surface reveal a highly anisotropic band-crossing feature located at the point of the surface Brillouin zone and showing no dispersion with the photon energy, thus being fully consistent with the theoretical prediction.