Magnetic Dirac Fermions and Chern Insulator Supported on Pristine Silicon Surface

Abstract

Emergence of ferromagnetism in non-magnetic semiconductors is strongly desirable, especially in topological materials thanks to the possibility to achieve quantum anomalous Hall effect. Based on first-principles calculations, we propose that for Si thin film grown on metal substrate, the pristine Si(111)-root3xroot3 surface with a spontaneous weak reconstruction has a strong tendency of ferromagnetism and nontrivial topological properties, characterized by spin polarized Dirac-fermion surface states. In contrast to conventional routes relying on introduction of alien charge carriers or specially patterned substrates, the spontaneous magnetic order and spin-orbit coupling on the pristine silicon surface together gives rise to quantized anomalous Hall effect with a finite Chern number C=-1. This work suggests exciting opportunities in silicon-based spintronics and quantum computing free from alien dopants or proximity effects.

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• NiCl3 Monolayer: Dirac Spin-Gapless Semiconductor and Chern Insulator
• Spin-Orientation Dependent Topological States in Two-Dimensional Antiferromagnetic NiTl${}_2$S${}_4$ Monolayers
• Spin-orbit coupling and magnetic interactions in Si(111):{C,Si,Sn,Pb}
• Surface magnetism of gallium arsenide nanofilms
• Realization of Flat Band with Possible Nontrivial Topology in Electronic Kagome Lattice