In-depth Analysis of Anisotropic Magnetoconductance in Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$ thin films with electron-electron interaction corrections

Abstract

A combination of out-of-plane and in-plane magnetoconductance (MC) study in topological insulators (TI) is often used as an experimental technique to probe weak anti-localization (WAL) response of the topological surface states (TSSs). However, in addition to the above WAL response, weak localization (WL) contribution from conducting bulk states are also known to coexist and contribute to the overall MC; a study that has so far received limited attention. In this article, we accurately extract the above WL contribution by systematically analyzing the temperature and magnetic field dependency of conductivity in Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$ films. For accurate analysis, we quantify the contribution of electron-electron interactions to the measured MC which is often ignored in recent WAL studies. Moreover, we show that the WAL effect arising from the TSSs with finite penetration depth, for out-of-plane and in-plane magnetic field can together explain the anisotropic magnetoconductance (AMC) and, thus, the investigated AMC study can serve as a useful technique to probe the parameters like phase coherence length and penetration depth that characterise the TSSs in 3D TIs. We also demonstrate that increase in bulk-disorder, achieved by growing the films on amorphous SiO${}_2$ substrate rather than on crystalline Al${}_2$O${}_3$(0001), can lead to stronger decoupling between the top and bottom surface states of the film.

References in corpus (14)

• Gate-Voltage Control of Chemical Potential and Weak Anti-localization in Bismuth Selenide
• Two-dimensional Dirac fermions in a topological insulator: transport in the quantum limit
• Topological origin of subgap conductance in insulating bilayer graphene
• Impurity effect on weak anti-localization in the topological insulator Bi2Te3
• Bulk Band Gap and Surface State Conduction Observed in Voltage-Tuned Crystals of the Topological Insulator Bi${}_2$Se${}_3$
• First Principles Studies on 3-Dimentional Strong Topological Insulators: Bi2Te3, Bi2Se3 and Sb2Te3
• Tunable Surface Conductivity in Bi2Se3 Revealed in Diffusive Electron Transport
• Epitaxial growth of topological insulator Bi2Se3 film on Si(111) with atomically sharp interface
• Interplay between ferromagnetism, surface states, and quantum corrections in a magnetically doped topological insulator
• Transport Properties of Topological Insulators: Band Bending, Bulk Metal-to-Insulator Transition, and Weak Anti-Localization
• Emergence of decoupled surface transport channels in bulk insulating Bi2Se3 thin films
• Robust topological surface states of Bi2Se3 thin films on amorphous SiO2/Si substrate and a large ambipolar gating effect
• Dirac-Electrons-Mediated Magnetic Proximity Effect in Topological Insulator / Magnetic Insulator Heterostructures
• Crossover Between Weak Antilocalization and Weak Localization and Electron-Electron Interaction in Few-Layer WTe${}_2$