Experimental verification of PbBi2Te4 as a 3D topological insulator

Phys Rev Lett. 2012 May 18;108(20):206803. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.206803. Epub 2012 May 15.

Abstract

The experimental evidence is presented of the topological insulator state in PbBi2Te4. A single surface Dirac cone is observed by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy with synchrotron radiation. Topological invariants Z2 are calculated from the ab initio band structure to be 1;(111). The observed two-dimensional isoenergy contours in the bulk energy gap are found to be the largest among the known three-dimensional topological insulators. This opens a pathway to achieving a sufficiently large spin current density in future spintronic devices.