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Stacked topological insulator built from bismuth-based graphene sheet analogues

Nature Materials volume 12, pages 422–425 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Commonly, materials are classified as either electrical conductors or insulators. The theoretical discovery of topological insulators has fundamentally challenged this dichotomy. In a topological insulator, the spin–orbit interaction generates a non-trivial topology of the electronic band structure dictating that its bulk is perfectly insulating, whereas its surface is fully conducting. The first topological insulator candidate material put forward—graphene—is of limited practical use because its weak spin–orbit interactions produce a bandgap of ~ 0.01 K. Recent reexaminations of Bi2Se3 and Bi2Te3, however, have firmly categorized these materials as strong three-dimensional topological insulators. We have synthesized the first bulk material belonging to an entirely different, weak, topological class, built from stacks of two-dimensional topological insulators: Bi14Rh3I9. Its Bi–Rh sheets are graphene analogues, but with a honeycomb net composed of RhBi8 cubes rather than carbon atoms. The strong bismuth-related spin–orbit interaction renders each graphene-like layer a topological insulator with a 2,400 K bandgap.

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Figure 1: Structure of Bi14Rh3I9 and its relation to graphene.
Figure 2: Electronic structure of Bi14Rh3I9 with and without spin–orbit interaction.
Figure 3: Band structure as measured by angle-resolved photoemission26 compared to the calculated one.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the help of S. Thirupathaiah, T. Kim and J. Maletz at the ARPES beamline and the grants: BO 1912/3-1, BO 1912/2-2 and ZA 654/1-1. We thank M. Kaiser and A. Gerisch for contributions in solving the crystal structure. We are indebted to ZIH TU Dresden for the provided computational facilities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry and Food Chemistry, TU Dresden, D-01062 Dresden, Germany

    Bertold Rasche, Anna Isaeva & Michael Ruck

  2. Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, D-01187 Dresden, Germany

    Michael Ruck

  3. Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research, IFW Dresden, D-01069 Dresden, Germany

    Sergey Borisenko, Volodymyr Zabolotnyy, Bernd Büchner, Klaus Koepernik, Carmine Ortix, Manuel Richter & Jeroen van den Brink

  4. Department of Physics, TU Dresden, D-01062 Dresden, Germany

    Bernd Büchner & Jeroen van den Brink

Authors
  1. Bertold Rasche
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  2. Anna Isaeva
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  3. Michael Ruck
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  4. Sergey Borisenko
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  7. Klaus Koepernik
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  8. Carmine Ortix
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  9. Manuel Richter
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  10. Jeroen van den Brink
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Contributions

B.R. and M. Ruck. planned and carried out the material synthesis and X-ray analysis. S.B., V.Z. and B.B. planned and carried out the ARPES experiments. S.B. prepared the samples and analysed the ARPES data. J.v.d.B., C.O. and M. Richter developed the theory with A.I., B.R., K.K. and M. Richter performing the band-structure calculations and K.K. implementing the calculation of topological invariants into the FPLO code. A.I. analysed the chemical bonding. J.v.d.B. and M. Ruck wrote the paper with contributions from all co-authors. M. Ruck, B.B. and J.v.d.B. supervised the project.

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Correspondence to Jeroen van den Brink.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Rasche, B., Isaeva, A., Ruck, M. et al. Stacked topological insulator built from bismuth-based graphene sheet analogues. Nature Mater 12, 422–425 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3570

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