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Nanoelectronics

A topological twist for transistors

Nature Nanotechnology volume 6, pages 197–198 (2011)Cite this article

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A nanoribbon of a material with topological surface states has been used as the channel in a field-effect transistor.

An ordinary insulator such as glass cannot conduct electricity because electrons are not free to move through the material, but physicists have recently discovered a special type of insulator that behaves somewhat differently. The electrons inside or in the bulk of these 'topological insulators' behave like the electrons in conventional insulators. However, topological insulators have surface states in which electrons can flow as easily as in a metal. A topological insulator can thus be thought of as a glass that is coated with a very thin (~1 nm thick) layer of metal on its surface (or along its edges for a two-dimensional topological insulator). More importantly, these surface or edge states possess exotic properties that could prove useful in applications such as error-tolerant quantum computation and low-power electronics1,2,3.

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Figure 1: A FET in which the channel is a topological insulator nanoribbon7.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Qi-Kun Xue is in the Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084 China.,

    Qi-Kun Xue

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  1. Qi-Kun Xue
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Xue, QK. A topological twist for transistors. Nature Nanotech 6, 197–198 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2011.47

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