Bi(111) thin film with insulating interior but metallic surfaces

Abstract

The electrical conductance of molecular beam epitaxial Bi on BaF2(111) was measured as a function of both film thickness (4-540 nm) and temperature (5-300 K). Unlike bulk Bi as a prototype semimetal, the Bi thin films up to 90 nm are found to be insulating in the interiors but metallic on the surfaces. This result has not only resolved unambiguously the long controversy about the existence of semimetal-semiconductor transition in Bi thin film but also provided a straightforward interpretation for the long-puzzled temperature dependence of the resistivity of Bi thin films, which in turn might suggest some potential applications in spintronics.

References in corpus (4)

• Topological Insulators with Inversion Symmetry
• A topological Dirac insulator in a quantum spin Hall phase : Experimental observation of first strong topological insulator
• Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Enhanced Magnetic Response by Spin-Orbit Coupling
• Stable nontrivial Z2 topology in ultrathin Bi (111) films: a first-principles study

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