A topological insulator is a new class of material discovered just a few years ago. It has fascinating properties: it behaves as an insulator in its bulk but contains conducting states at its boundary. In three dimensions, they are similar to a common band insulator with metallic surfaces that are protected by non-trivial topological order of the band structure. In two dimensions, they are characterized by one dimensional edge currents. The charge carriers at the boundary states have their spin locked at a right-angle to their momentum (so called spin-momentum locking), which can find applications in sensors, spin-electronics (spin torque, spin filtering, etc), thermoelectricity, plasmonics, etc.
We study the charge, spin transport and thermoelectric properties of topological insulators. We use exfoliated single crystals and thin films that are grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy with which we fabricate our own devices.
Magnetic Topological Insulator
High quality sample lamella for HR(S)TEM.