Spin valley and giant quantum spin Hall gap of hydrofluorinated bismuth nanosheet

Heng Gao; Wei Wu; Tao Hu; Alessandro Stroppa; Xinran Wang; Baigeng Wang; Feng Miao; Wei Ren

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-25478-6

Spin valley and giant quantum spin Hall gap of hydrofluorinated bismuth nanosheet

Sci Rep. 2018 May 9;8(1):7436. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-25478-6.

Authors

Heng Gao¹, Wei Wu¹, Tao Hu¹, Alessandro Stroppa^{1

2}, Xinran Wang³, Baigeng Wang⁴, Feng Miao⁴, Wei Ren^{5

6}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, Materials Genome Institute, Shanghai Key Laboratory of High Temperature Superconductors, and International Centre for Quantum and Molecular Structures, Shanghai University, 200444, Shanghai, China.
² Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR-SPIN), Via Vetoio, I-67100, L'Aquila, Italy.
³ School of Electronic Science and Engineering, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, 210093, Nanjing, China.
⁴ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, 210093, Nanjing, China.
⁵ Department of Physics, Materials Genome Institute, Shanghai Key Laboratory of High Temperature Superconductors, and International Centre for Quantum and Molecular Structures, Shanghai University, 200444, Shanghai, China. renwei@shu.edu.cn.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, 710072, China. renwei@shu.edu.cn.

Abstract

Spin-valley and electronic band topological properties have been extensively explored in quantum material science, yet their coexistence has rarely been realized in stoichiometric two-dimensional (2D) materials. We theoretically predict the quantum spin Hall effect (QSHE) in the hydrofluorinated bismuth (Bi₂HF) nanosheet where the hydrogen (H) and fluorine (F) atoms are functionalized on opposite sides of bismuth (Bi) atomic monolayer. Such Bi₂HF nanosheet is found to be a 2D topological insulator with a giant band gap of 0.97 eV which might host room temperature QSHE. The atomistic structure of Bi₂HF nanosheet is noncentrosymmetric and the spontaneous polarization arises from the hydrofluorinated morphology. The phonon spectrum and ab initio molecular dynamic (AIMD) calculations reveal that the proposed Bi₂HF nanosheet is dynamically and thermally stable. The inversion symmetry breaking together with spin-orbit coupling (SOC) leads to the coupling between spin and valley in Bi₂HF nanosheet. The emerging valley-dependent properties and the interplay between intrinsic dipole and SOC are investigated using first-principles calculations combined with an effective Hamiltonian model. The topological invariant of the Bi₂HF nanosheet is confirmed by using Wilson loop method and the calculated helical metallic edge states are shown to host QSHE. The Bi₂HF nanosheet is therefore a promising platform to realize room temperature QSHE and valley spintronics.