Synthesis and characterization of a Sb2Te3/Bi2Te3 p-n junction heterostructure via electrodeposition in nanoporous membranes

Rashmi Rani; Sandrine Tusseau-Nenez; Pierre-Eugene Coulon; Travis L Wade; Marcin Konczykowski

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2021.102694

Synthesis and characterization of a Sb₂Te₃/Bi₂Te₃ p-n junction heterostructure via electrodeposition in nanoporous membranes

iScience. 2021 Jun 7;24(6):102694. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.102694. eCollection 2021 Jun 25.

Authors

Rashmi Rani¹, Sandrine Tusseau-Nenez², Pierre-Eugene Coulon¹, Travis L Wade¹, Marcin Konczykowski¹

Affiliations

¹ Laboratoire des Solides Irradiés, UMR 7642 CEA-CNRS-Ecole polytechnique, France.
² Laboratoire de Physique de la Matière Condensée, UMR 7643 CNRS-Ecole polytechnique, France.

Abstract

Topological insulators (TIs) are bulk insulators with metallic surface states that can be described by a single Dirac cone. However, low-dimensional solids such as nanowires (NWs) are a challenge, due to the difficulty of separating surface contributions from bulk carriers. Fabrication of NWs with high surface-to-volume ratio can be realized by different methods such as chemical vapor transport, molecular beam epitaxy, and electrodeposition. The last method is used in the present work allowing the growth of structures such as p-n junctions, intercalation of magnetic or superconducting dots. We report the synthesis of high-quality TI NW: Bi₂Te₃, Sb₂Te₃ and p-n junction via electrodeposition. Structural, morphological, and nanostructure properties of NWs have been investigated by various characterization techniques. Interface structures and lateral heterojunctions (LHJ) in p-n junction NWs has also been made.

Keywords: Nanoscience; materials science; materials synthesis.