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Large non-reciprocal charge transport mediated by quantum anomalous Hall edge states

Nature Nanotechnology volume 15, pages 831–835 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

The topological nature of the quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE) causes a dissipationless chiral edge current at the sample boundary1,2. Of fundamental interest is whether the chirality of the band structure manifests itself in charge transport properties. Here we report the observation of large non-reciprocal charge transport3 in a magnetic topological insulator, Cr-doped (Bi,Sb)2Te3. When the surface massive Dirac band is slightly carrier doped by a gate voltage, the edge state starts to dissipate and exhibits a current-direction-dependent resistance with a directional difference as large as 26%. The polarity of this diode effect depends on the magnetization direction as well as on the carrier type, electrons or holes. The correlation between the non-reciprocal resistance and the Hall resistance indicates that the non-reciprocity originates from the interplay between the chiral edge state and the Dirac surface state.

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Fig. 1: Large non-reciprocal charge transport mediated by the edge states.
Fig. 2: Fermi-level dependence of non-reciprocal resistance.
Fig. 3: Relationship between Hall resistance and non-reciprocal resistance.

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Data availability

The authors declare that all relevant data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its Supplementary Information. Additional data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a JSPS/MEXT Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (no. 15H05853, no. 15H05867, no. 16J03476, no. 17H04846, no. 18H03676, no. 18H04229 and no. 18H01155), JST CREST (no. JPMJCR16F1, no. JPMJCR1874 and no. JPMJCR19T3) and JST PRESTO (no. JPMJPR19L9).

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Author notes

  1. Kenji Yasuda

    Present address: Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Physics and Quantum-Phase Electronics Center (QPEC), University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Kenji Yasuda, Takahiro Morimoto, Masataka Mogi, Masashi Kawasaki, Naoto Nagaosa & Yoshinori Tokura

  2. PRESTO, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Chiyoda-ku, Japan

    Takahiro Morimoto & Kei S. Takahashi

  3. RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS), Wako, Japan

    Ryutaro Yoshimi, Minoru Kawamura, Kei S. Takahashi, Masashi Kawasaki, Naoto Nagaosa & Yoshinori Tokura

  4. Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan

    Atsushi Tsukazaki

  5. Tokyo College, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Yoshinori Tokura

Authors
  1. Kenji Yasuda
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Contributions

Y.T. conceived the project. K.Y., M.M. and R.Y. grew the thin films with the help of A.T., M. Kawamura, K.S.T. and M. Kawasaki. K.Y. and R.Y. fabricated the device and performed the measurements. T.M. and N.N. performed the theoretical calculations. K.Y., T.M., N.N. and Y.T. jointly wrote the manuscript with contributions from all the authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Kenji Yasuda or Yoshinori Tokura.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary text, Figs. 1–7, Table 1 and refs. 1–37.

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Source Data Fig. 1

Data used to generate graphs in Fig. 1.

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Yasuda, K., Morimoto, T., Yoshimi, R. et al. Large non-reciprocal charge transport mediated by quantum anomalous Hall edge states. Nat. Nanotechnol. 15, 831–835 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-020-0733-2

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