Topological Insulating States in Laterally Patterned Ordinary Semiconductors

Abstract

We propose that ordinary semiconductors with large spin-orbit coupling (SOC), such as GaAs, can host stable, robust, and {\it tunable} topological states in the presence of quantum confinement and superimposed potentials with hexagonal symmetry. We show that the electronic gaps which support chiral spin edge states can be as large as the electronic bandwidth in the heterostructure miniband. The existing lithographic technology can produce a topological insulator (TI) operating at temperature $10-100K$. Improvement of lithographic techniques will open way to tunable room temperature TI.

5 pages, 3 figures, updated refs and minor changes to the text, version published in Phys. Rev. Lett

References in corpus (10)

• The electronic properties of graphene
• Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topological Phase Transition in HgTe Quantum Wells
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• Topological Insulators with Inversion Symmetry
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• Two-dimensional Mott-Hubbard electrons in an artificial honeycomb lattice
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• Quantum Spin Hall Effect in Two-dimensional Crystals of Transition Metal Dichalcogenides
• Interface-induced Topological Insulator Transition in GaAs/Ge/GaAs Quantum Wells
• Dirac Cones, Topological Edge States, and Nontrivial Flat Bands in Two-Dimensional Semiconductors with a Honeycomb Nanogeometry
• Generation of Anisotropic Massless Dirac Fermions and Asymmetric Klein Tunneling in Few-Layer Black Phosphorus Superlattices
• Persistent charge and spin currents in the long wavelength regime for graphene rings
• Sublattice structure and topology in spontaneously crystallized electronic states
• Intrinsic first and higher-order topological superconductivity in a doped topological insulator
• Artificial Graphene: Unconventional Superconductivity in a Honeycomb Superlattice
• Dimensional reduction of the Luttinger Hamiltonian and g-factors of holes in symmetric two-dimensional semiconductor heterostructures
• Acoustic Traps and Lattices for Electrons in Semiconductors
• Gate-tunable topological phases in superlattice modulated bilayer graphene
• Merging of the Dirac points in electronic artificial graphene
• Topological Aspect of Graphene Patchwork with Regular Arrays of Nano Holes
• Blurring the boundaries between topological and non-topological phenomena in dots
• An all electron topological insulator in InAs double wells
• Tuning the topological insulator states of artificial graphene
• Formation of artificial Fermi surfaces with a triangular superlattice on a conventional two dimensional electron gas
• Lateral 2D superlattices in GaAs heterostructures with independent control of carrier density and modulation potential
• Chern insulating state in laterally patterned semiconductor heterostructures
• Two-dimensional topological semimetal state in a nanopatterned semiconductor system
• The electronic structure and intervalley coupling of artificial and genuine graphene superlattice
• Correlated physics in an artificial triangular anti-dot lattice
• Field-Programmable Topological Array: Framework and Case-Studies
• Artificial electrostatic crystals: a new platform for creating correlated quantum states
• Designing Flat Bands and Pseudo-Landau Levels in GaAs with Patterned Gates
• Artificial Gauge Field and Quantum Spin Hall States in a Conventional Two-dimensional Electron Gas