Transferring MBE-grown topological insulator films to arbitrary substrates and Metal-insulator transition via Dirac gap

Abstract

Mechanical exfoliation of bulk crystals has been widely used to obtain thin topological insulator (TI) flakes for device fabrication. However, such a process produces only micro-sized flakes that are highly irregular in shape and thickness. In this work, we developed a process to transfer the entire area of TI Bi2Se3 thin films grown epitaxially on Al2O3 and SiO2 to arbitrary substrates, maintaining their pristine morphology and crystallinity. Transport measurements show that these transferred films have lower carrier concentrations and comparable or higher mobilities than before the transfer. Furthermore, using this process we demonstrated a clear metal-insulator transition in an ultrathin Bi2Se3 film by gate-tuning its Fermi level into the hybridization gap formed at the Dirac point. The ability to transfer large area TI films to any substrate will facilitate fabrication of TI heterostructure devices, which will help explore exotic phenomena such as Majorana fermions and topological magnetoelectricity.

arXiv comment12 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Colloquium: Topological Band Theory
• Signature of a topological phase transition in the Josephson supercurrent through a topological insulator
• Large-Area and Transferred High-Quality Three-Dimensional Topological Insulator Bi2-xSbxTe3-ySey Ultrathin Film by Catalyst-Free Physical Vapor Deposition
• Solution to the hole-doping problem and tunable quantum Hall effect in Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$ thin films
• Gate-Variable Mid-Infrared Optical Transitions in a $(B{i}_{1-x}S{b}_x{)}_{2}T{e}_3$ Topological Insulator
• Disorder-driven topological phase transition in Bi2Se3 films
• Magnetic Order in 3D Topological Insulators -- Wishful Thinking or Gateway to Emergent Quantum Effects?
• Large-gap quantum anomalous Hall states induced by functionalizing buckled Bi-III monolayer/Al${}_2$O${}_3$
• From classical to quantum regime of topological surface states via defect engineering
• Second harmonic generation and third harmonic generation in topological insulator-based van der Waals metamaterials
• Preservation of Topological Surface States in Millimeter-Scale Transferred Membranes