The d-p band-inversion topological insulator in bismuth-based skutterudites

Abstract

Skutterudites, a class of materials with cage-like crystal structure which have received considerable research interest in recent years, are the breeding ground of several unusual phenomena such as heavy fermion superconductivity, exciton-mediated superconducting state and Weyl fermions. Here, we predict a new topological insulator in bismuth-based skutterudites, in which the bands involved in the topological band-inversion process are d- and p-orbitals, which is distinctive with usual topological insulators, for instance in Bi2Se3 and BiTeI the bands involved in the topological band-inversion process are only p-orbitals. Due to the present of large d-electronic states, the electronic interaction in this topological insulator is much stronger than that in other conventional topological insulators. The stability of the new material is verified by binding energy calculation, phonon modes analysis, and the finite temperature molecular dynamics simulations. This new material can provide nearly zero-resistivity signal current for devices and is expected to be applied in spintronics devices.

References in corpus (15)

• Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topological Phase Transition in HgTe Quantum Wells
• Superconducting proximity effect and Majorana fermions at the surface of a topological insulator
• Topological Insulators with Inversion Symmetry
• Discovery (theoretical prediction and experimental observation) of a large-gap topological-insulator class with spin-polarized single-Dirac-cone on the surface
• Topological Field Theory of Time-Reversal Invariant Insulators
• Quantized Anomalous Hall Effect in Magnetic Topological Insulators
• Half-Heusler Compounds as a New Class of Three-Dimensional Topological Insulators
• Emergent quantum confinement at topological insulator surfaces
• Mott Physics and Topological Phase Transition in Correlated Dirac Fermions
• Signatures of a Pressure-Induced Topological Quantum Phase Transition in BiTeI
• Tailoring Magnetic Doping in the Topological Insulator Bi2Se3
• Three-Dimensional Topological Insulators in I-III-VI${}_2$ and II-IV-V${}_2$ Chalcopyrite Semiconductors
• Superconductivity in Topological Insulator Sb2Te3 Induced by Pressure
• Magneto-transport in copper-doped noncentrosymmetric BiTeI
• Dynamics of the (spin-) Hall effect in topological insulators and graphene