Temperature-driven transition from a semiconductor to a topological insulator

Abstract

We report on a temperature-induced transition from a conventional semiconductor to a two-dimensional topological insulator investigated by means of magnetotransport experiments on HgTe/CdTe quantum well structures. At low temperatures, we are in the regime of the quantum spin Hall effect and observe an ambipolar quantized Hall resistance by tuning the Fermi energy through the bulk band gap. At room temperature, we find electron and hole conduction that can be described by a classical two-carrier model. Above the onset of quantized magnetotransport at low temperature, we observe a pronounced linear magnetoresistance that develops from a classical quadratic low-field magnetoresistance if electrons and holes coexist. Temperature-dependent bulk band structure calculations predict a transition from a conventional semiconductor to a topological insulator in the regime where the linear magnetoresistance occurs.

7 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (17)

• Topological Insulators
• Topological insulators and superconductors
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• Non-saturating magnetoresistance in heavily disordered semiconductors
• Observation of Quantum Spin Hall States in InAs/GaSb Bilayers under Broken Time-Reversal Symmetry
• Spin polarization of the quantum spin Hall edge states
• Band structure of semimagnetic Hg1-yMnyTe quantum wells
• Single valley Dirac fermions in zero-gap HgTe quantum wells
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• Edge Channel Transport in InAs/GaSb Topological Insulating Phase
• Magnetoresistance in two-component systems
• Magnetotransport and induced superconductivity in Bi based three-dimensional topological insulators
• Linear magnetoresistance in HgTe quantum wells

Cited by in corpus (20)

• Pressure and temperature driven phase transitions in HgTe quantum wells
• Temperature-induced topological phase transition in HgTe quantum wells
• Temperature-driven single-valley Dirac fermions in HgTe quantum wells
• Two-dimensional quantum transport of multivalley (111) surface state in topological crystalline insulator SnTe thin films
• Magnetoresistance of compensated semimetals in confined geometries
• Large gap quantum spin Hall insulator, massless Dirac fermions and bilayer graphene analogue in InAs/Ga(In)Sb heterostructures
• Realistic picture of helical edge states in HgTe quantum wells
• Linear magnetoresistance in compensated graphene bilayer
• Nonmonotonic magnetoresistance of a two-dimensional viscous electron-hole fluid in a confined geometry
• Highly efficient spin-to-charge current conversion at room temperature in strained HgTe surface states
• Temperature-dependent magnetospectroscopy of HgTe quantum wells
• Counterflows in viscous electron-hole fluid
• Massless Dirac fermions in III-V semiconductor quantum wells
• Disorder-induced phase transition in Dirac systems beyond the linear approximation
• Many-particle effects in optical transitions from zero-mode Landau levels in HgTe quantum wells
• Quantum spin Hall effect in III-V semiconductors at elevated temperatures: advancing topological electronics
• Temperature effects in topological insulators of transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers
• Precise determination of critical points of topological phase transitions via shift current in two-dimensional inversion asymmetric insulators
• Disorder-induced phase transitions in double HgTe quantum wells
• Many-particle hybridization of optical transitions from zero-mode Landau levels in HgTe quantum wells