Strain engineering of topological properties in lead-salt semiconductors

Abstract

Rock-salt chalcogenide SnTe represents the simplest realization of a topological insulator where a crystal symmetry allows for the appearence of topologically protected metallic states with an even number of Dirac cones on high-symmetry crystal surfaces. Related rock-salt lead chalcogenides have been predicted as well to undergo a phase-transition to a topological crystalline insulating phase after band inversion induced by alloying and pressure. Here we theoretically predict that strain, as realized in thin films grown on (001) substrates, may induce such topological phase-transitions. Furthermore, relevant topological properties of the surface states, such as the location of the Dirac cones on the surface Brillouin zone or the decay length of edge states, appear to be tunable with strain, with potential implications for technological devices benefiting from those additional degrees of freedom.

References in corpus (5)

• Topological Crystalline Insulators
• The space group classification of topological band insulators
• The topological-crystalline-insulator (Pb,Sn)Te - surface states and their spin-polarization
• Pressure-induced Topological Phase Transitions in Rock-salt Chalcogenides
• Spin-polarized (001) surface states of the topological crystalline insulator Pb_{0.73}Sn_{0.27}Se

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Strain-induced partially flat band, helical snake states, and interface superconductivity in topological crystalline insulators
• Rock-salt SnS and SnSe: Native Topological Crystalline Insulators
• Symmetry breaking and Landau quantization in topological crystalline insulators
• Strain engineering Dirac surface states in heteroepitaxial topological crystalline insulator thin films
• Observation of topological crystalline insulator surface states on (111)-oriented Pb${}_{1-x}$Sn${}_x$Se films
• Topological Crystalline Insulator Nanomembrane with Strain-Tunable Band Gap
• Direct observation and temperature control of the surface Dirac gap in the topological crystalline insulator (Pb,Sn)Se
• Interplay of orbital effects and nanoscale strain in topological crystalline insulators
• Strain-induced gauge and Rashba fields in ferroelectric Rashba lead chalcogenide PbX monolayers (X = S, Se, Te)
• Fermi surface evolution of Na-doped PbTe studied through density functional theory calculations and Shubnikov-de Haas measurements
• Breaking crystalline symmetry of epitaxial SnTe films by strain
• Atomic-ordering-induced quantum phase transition between topological crystalline insulator and Z2 topological insulator
• Fragility of the Dirac Cone Splitting in Topological Crystalline Insulator Heterostructures
• Impact of Ferroelectric Distortion on Thermopower in BaTiO3