Spin-orbit coupling is increasingly seen as a rich source of novel phenomena, as shown by the recent excitement around topological insulators and Rashba effects. We here show that the addition of ferroelectric degrees of freedom to a semiconductor featuring topologically nontrivial properties, such as SnTe, merges the intriguing field of spin-orbit-driven physics with nonvolatile functionalities appealing for spintronics. By using a variety of modeling techniques, we show that a strikingly rich sequence of phases can be induced in SnTe, when going from a room-temperature cubic phase to a low-temperature ferroelectric structure, ranging from a topological crystalline insulator to a time-reversal-invariant Z(2) topological insulator to a "ferroelectric Rashba semiconductor," exhibiting a huge electrically controllable Rashba effect in the bulk band structure.
Engineering relativistic effects in ferroelectric SnTe
Plekhanov E;Barone P;Di Sante D;Picozzi S
2014
Abstract
Spin-orbit coupling is increasingly seen as a rich source of novel phenomena, as shown by the recent excitement around topological insulators and Rashba effects. We here show that the addition of ferroelectric degrees of freedom to a semiconductor featuring topologically nontrivial properties, such as SnTe, merges the intriguing field of spin-orbit-driven physics with nonvolatile functionalities appealing for spintronics. By using a variety of modeling techniques, we show that a strikingly rich sequence of phases can be induced in SnTe, when going from a room-temperature cubic phase to a low-temperature ferroelectric structure, ranging from a topological crystalline insulator to a time-reversal-invariant Z(2) topological insulator to a "ferroelectric Rashba semiconductor," exhibiting a huge electrically controllable Rashba effect in the bulk band structure.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
