Journal article
The effect of substrate and surface plasmons on symmetry breaking at the substrate interface of the topological insulator Bi2Te3
- Abstract:
- A pressing challenge in engineering devices with topological insulators (TIs) is that electron transport is dominated by the bulk conductance, and so dissipationless surface states account for only a small fraction of the conductance. Enhancing the surface-to-volume ratio is a common method to enhance the relative contribution of such states. In thin films with reduced thickness, the confinement results in symmetry-breaking and is critical for the experimental observation of topologically protected surface states. We employ micro-Raman and tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy to examine three different mechanisms of symmetry breaking in Bi2Te3 TI thin films: surface plasmon generation, charge transfer, and application of a periodic strain potential. These mechanisms are facilitated by semiconducting and insulating substrates that modify the electronic and mechanical conditions at the sample surface and alter the long-range interactions between Bi2Te3 and the substrate. We confirm the symmetry breaking in Bi2Te3 via the emergence of the Raman-forbidden ܣଵ௨ ଶ mode. Our results suggest that topological surface states can exist at the Bi2Te3/substrate interface, which is in a good agreement with previous theoretical results predicting the tunability of the vertical location of helical surface states in TI/substrate heterostructures.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 4.2MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41598-019-42598-9
Authors
- Publisher:
- Nature Research
- Journal:
- Scientific Reports More from this journal
- Volume:
- 9
- Article number:
- 6147
- Publication date:
- 2019-04-16
- Acceptance date:
- 2019-04-01
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2045-2322
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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pubs:987341
- UUID:
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uuid:fb8f3bc6-6a3e-4650-9f1b-1a3bcb24e693
- Local pid:
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pubs:987341
- Source identifiers:
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987341
- Deposit date:
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2019-04-01
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Wiesner et al
- Copyright date:
- 2019
- Notes:
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© The Author(s) 2019. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or
format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. Te images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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