Berlin 2018 – scientific programme
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HL: Fachverband Halbleiterphysik
HL 7: Topological insulators I (joint session HL/TT)
HL 7.8: Talk
Monday, March 12, 2018, 11:30–11:45, A 151
A room-temperature and switchable Kane-Mele quantum spin Hall insulator — •Antimo Marrazzo, Marco Gibertini, Davide Campi, Nicolas Mounet, and Nicola Marzari — Theory and Simulation of Materials (THEOS) and National Centre for Computational Design and Discovery of Novel Materials (MARVEL), Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, 1015, Switzerland
Fundamental research and technological applications of topological insulators are hindered by the rarity of materials exhibiting a robust topologically non-trivial phase, especially in two dimensions (2D). Here, by means of extensive first-principles calculations, we propose a novel quantum spin Hall insulator (QSHI) with a sizeable band gap of ∼0.5 eV at the G0W0 level, that is a monolayer of a naturally occurring layered mineral. This system realises the paradigmatic Kane-Mele model for QSHIs in a potentially exfoliable 2D monolayer with helical edge states that are robust even beyond room temperature and that can be manipulated exploiting a unique strong interplay between spin-orbit coupling, crystal-symmetry breaking, and dielectric response.