Giant Rashba Splitting in Pb1-x Snx Te (111) Topological Crystalline Insulator Films Controlled by Bi Doping in the Bulk

Valentine V Volobuev; Partha S Mandal; Marta Galicka; Ondřej Caha; Jaime Sánchez-Barriga; Domenico Di Sante; Andrei Varykhalov; Amir Khiar; Silvia Picozzi; Günther Bauer; Perla Kacman; Ryszard Buczko; Oliver Rader; Gunther Springholz

doi:10.1002/adma.201604185

Giant Rashba Splitting in Pb_1-_x Sn_x Te (111) Topological Crystalline Insulator Films Controlled by Bi Doping in the Bulk

Adv Mater. 2017 Jan;29(3). doi: 10.1002/adma.201604185. Epub 2016 Nov 17.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Institute for Semiconductor and Solid State Physics, Johannes Kepler Universität, Altenberger Str. 69, 4040, Linz, Austria.
² National Technical University "Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute", Frunze Str. 21, 61002, Kharkiv, Ukraine.
³ Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie, Albert-Einstein Str. 15,, 12489, Berlin, Germany.
⁴ Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Aleja Lotników 32/46, PL-02-668, Warszawa, Poland.
⁵ Department of Condensed Matter Physics, Masaryk University, Kotlárˇská 2, 61137, Brno, Czech Republic.
⁶ Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche CNR-SPIN, Via dei Vestini 31, 66100, Chieti, Italy.
⁷ Institut für Physik und Astrophysik, Universität Würzburg, Am Hubland Campus Süd, Würzburg, 97074, Germany.

PMID: 27859857
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201604185

Abstract

The topological properties of lead-tin chalcogenide topological crystalline insulators can be widely tuned by temperature and composition. It is shown that bulk Bi doping of epitaxial Pb_1-_x Sn_x Te (111) films induces a giant Rashba splitting at the surface that can be tuned by the doping level. Tight binding calculations identify their origin as Fermi level pinning by trap states at the surface.

Keywords: IV-VI semiconductors; Rashba effect; crystalline insulators; molecular beam epitaxy; photoemission spectroscopy.