Nonvolatile and Reversible Ferroelectric Control of Electronic Properties of Bi2Te3 Topological Insulator Thin Films Grown on Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 Single Crystals

Jian-Min Yan; Zhi-Xue Xu; Ting-Wei Chen; Meng Xu; Chao Zhang; Xu-Wen Zhao; Fei Liu; Lei Guo; Shu-Ying Yan; Guan-Yin Gao; Fei-Fei Wang; Jin-Xing Zhang; Si-Ning Dong; Xiao-Guang Li; Hao-Su Luo; Weiyao Zhao; Ren-Kui Zheng

doi:10.1021/acsami.8b20406

Nonvolatile and Reversible Ferroelectric Control of Electronic Properties of Bi₂Te₃ Topological Insulator Thin Films Grown on Pb(Mg_1/3Nb_2/3)O₃-PbTiO₃ Single Crystals

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2019 Mar 6;11(9):9548-9556. doi: 10.1021/acsami.8b20406. Epub 2019 Feb 20.

Authors

Jian-Min Yan¹, Zhi-Xue Xu¹, Ting-Wei Chen², Meng Xu¹, Chao Zhang³, Xu-Wen Zhao¹, Fei Liu¹, Lei Guo¹, Shu-Ying Yan⁴, Guan-Yin Gao³, Fei-Fei Wang⁵, Jin-Xing Zhang⁴, Si-Ning Dong⁶, Xiao-Guang Li³, Hao-Su Luo¹, Weiyao Zhao^{1

7}, Ren-Kui Zheng^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of High Performance Ceramics and Superfine Microstructure, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics , Chinese Academy of Sciences , Shanghai 200050 , China.
² School of Materials Science and Engineering , Nanchang University, and Jiangxi Engineering Laboratory for Advanced Functional Thin Films , Nanchang 330031 , China.
³ Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Department of Physics, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures , University of Science and Technology of China , Hefei 230026 , China.
⁴ Department of Physics , Beijing Normal University , Beijing 100875 , China.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Material and Device, Department of Physics , Shanghai Normal University , Shanghai 200234 , China.
⁶ Department of Physics , University of Notre Dame , Notre Dame , Indiana 46556 , United States.
⁷ ISEM, Innovation Campus , University of Wollongong , Wollongong , New South Wales 2500 , Australia.

PMID: 30724082
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.8b20406

Abstract

Single-phase (00 l)-oriented Bi₂Te₃ topological insulator thin films have been deposited on (111)-oriented ferroelectric 0.71Pb(Mg_1/3Nb_2/3)O₃-0.29PbTiO₃ (PMN-PT) single-crystal substrates. Taking advantage of the nonvolatile polarization charges induced by the polarization direction switching of PMN-PT substrates at room temperature, the carrier density, Fermi level, magnetoconductance, conductance channel, phase coherence length, and quantum corrections to the conductance can be in situ modulated in a reversible and nonvolatile manner. Specifically, upon the polarization switching from the positively poled P_r⁺ state (i.e., polarization direction points to the film) to the negatively poled P_r^- (i.e., polarization direction points to the bottom electrode) state, both the electron carrier density and the Fermi wave vector decrease significantly, reflecting a shift of the Fermi level toward the Dirac point. The polarization switching from P_r⁺ to P_r^- also results in significant increase of the conductance channel α from -0.15 to -0.3 and a decrease of the phase coherence length from 200 to 80 nm at T = 2 K as well as a reduction of the electron-electron interaction. All these results demonstrate that electric-voltage control of physical properties using PMN-PT as both substrates and gating materials provides a simple and a straightforward approach to realize reversible and nonvolatile tuning of electronic properties of topological thin films and may be further extended to study carrier density-related quantum transport properties of other quantum matter.

Keywords: electronic properties; ferroelectric field effect; ferroelectric single crystal; magnetoresistance; surface state; topological insulator thin films.