Abstract
Electrical charges on the boundaries of topological insulators favour forward motion over back-scattering at impurities, producing low-dissipation, metallic states that exist up to room temperature in ambient conditions. These states have the promise to impact a broad range of applications from electronics to the production of energy, which is one reason why topological insulators have become the rising star in condensed-matter physics. There are many challenges in the processing of these exotic materials to use the metallic states in functional devices, and they present great opportunities for the chemistry and materials science research communities.
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Acknowledgements
We have benefited from discussions with Shou-Cheng Zhang and Zhong Wang to improve this Perspective. Our research on topological insulators is supported by the Keck Foundation and DARPA MESO project (no. N66001-11-1-4105). Y. C. acknowledges the support from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Investigator Award (no. KUS-l1-001-12).
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Kong, D., Cui, Y. Opportunities in chemistry and materials science for topological insulators and their nanostructures. Nature Chem 3, 845–849 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.1171
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.1171
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