TY - JOUR
T1 - Engineering Dirac electrons emergent on the surface of a topological insulator
AU - Yoshimura, Yukinori
AU - Kobayashi, Koji
AU - Ohtsuki, Tomi
AU - Imura, Ken Ichiro
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 National Institute for Materials Science.
PY - 2015/4
Y1 - 2015/4
N2 - The concept of the topological insulator (TI) has introduced a new point of view to condensed-matter physics, relating a priori unrelated subfields such as quantum (spin, anomalous) Hall effects, spin-orbit coupled materials, some classes of nodal superconductors, superfluid 3He, etc. From a technological point of view, TIs are expected to serve as platforms for realizing dissipationless transport in a non-superconducting context. The TI exhibits a gapless surface state with a characteristic conic dispersion (a surface Dirac cone). Here, we review peculiar finite-size effects applicable to such surface states in TI nanostructures. We highlight the specific electronic properties of TI nanowires and nanoparticles, and in this context we contrast the cases of weak and strong TIs. We study the robustness of the surface and the bulk of TIs against disorder, addressing the physics of Dirac and Weyl semimetals as a new research perspective in the field.
AB - The concept of the topological insulator (TI) has introduced a new point of view to condensed-matter physics, relating a priori unrelated subfields such as quantum (spin, anomalous) Hall effects, spin-orbit coupled materials, some classes of nodal superconductors, superfluid 3He, etc. From a technological point of view, TIs are expected to serve as platforms for realizing dissipationless transport in a non-superconducting context. The TI exhibits a gapless surface state with a characteristic conic dispersion (a surface Dirac cone). Here, we review peculiar finite-size effects applicable to such surface states in TI nanostructures. We highlight the specific electronic properties of TI nanowires and nanoparticles, and in this context we contrast the cases of weak and strong TIs. We study the robustness of the surface and the bulk of TIs against disorder, addressing the physics of Dirac and Weyl semimetals as a new research perspective in the field.
KW - Dirac monopole
KW - Intrinsic Aharonov-Bohm effect
KW - Perfectly conducting channel
KW - Topological insulator
KW - Weak topological insulator
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U2 - 10.1088/1468-6996/16/1/014403
DO - 10.1088/1468-6996/16/1/014403
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:84923677292
VL - 16
JO - Science and Technology of Advanced Materials
JF - Science and Technology of Advanced Materials
SN - 1468-6996
IS - 1
M1 - 014403
ER -