Giant magnetochiral anisotropy from quantum confined surface states of topological insulator nanowires

Abstract

Wireless technology relies on the conversion of alternating electromagnetic fields to direct currents, a process known as rectification. While rectifiers are normally based on semiconductor diodes, quantum mechanical non-reciprocal transport effects that enable highly controllable rectification have recently been discovered. One such effect is magnetochiral anisotropy (MCA), where the resistance of a material or a device depends on both the direction of current flow and an applied magnetic field. However, the size of rectification possible due to MCA is usually extremely small, because MCA relies on inversion symmetry breaking leading to the manifestation of spin-orbit coupling, which is a relativistic effect. In typical materials the rectification coefficient $\gamma$ due to MCA is usually $|\gamma |\lesssim 1$ ${\mathrm{A}}^{-1}{\mathrm{T}}^{-1}$ and the maximum values reported so far are $|\gamma |\sim 100$ ${\mathrm{A}}^{-1}{\mathrm{T}}^{-1}$ in carbon nanotubes and ZrTe${}_5$. Here, to overcome this limitation, we artificially break inversion symmetry via an applied gate voltage in thin topological insulator (TI) nanowire heterostructures and theoretically predict that such a symmetry breaking can lead to a giant MCA effect. Our prediction is confirmed via experiments on thin bulk-insulating (Bi${}_{1-x}$Sb${}_x$)${}_2$Te${}_3$ TI nanowires, in which we observe an MCA consistent with theory and $|\gamma |\sim 100000$ ${\mathrm{A}}^{-1}{\mathrm{T}}^{-1}$, the largest ever reported MCA rectification coefficient in a normal conductor.

arXiv comment7 pages of main text with 3 figures. This version of the article has been accepted for publication, after peer review, but is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance improvements, or any corrections

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Cited by in corpus (23)

• Opportunities in topological insulator devices
• Superconducting diode effect due to magnetochiral anisotropy in topological insulator and Rashba nanowires
• Parity protected superconducting diode effect in topological Josephson junctions
• Giant Magnetochiral Anisotropy in Weyl-semimetal WTe2 Induced by Diverging Berry Curvature
• Non-linear Transport in Non-centrosymmetric Systems: From Fundamentals to Applications
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• Hole spin qubits in thin curved quantum wells
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• Determination of spin-orbit interaction in semiconductor nanostructures via non-linear transport
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• Electrical Magnetochiral current in Tellurium
• Anomalous Nonlinear Magnetoconductivity in van der Waals Magnet CrSBr
• Nonlinear planar magnetotransport due to tilted Dirac cones in topological materials
• Interband contributions to nonlinear transport in semiconductor nanostructures
• Nonreciprocal charge transport in polar Dirac metals with tunable spin-valley coupling
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• Optical conductivity of a topological system driven using a realistic pulse
• Room temperature quantum metric effect in TbMn6Sn6