Annual meeting of the Swiss Physical Society 2018

【614】 Prediction of a large-gap and switchable Kane-Mele quantum spin Hall insulators from first-principles simulations

31 Aug 2018, 12:15

15m

CE 2 (EPFL)

Talk Advances in Topological Materials Advances in Topological Materials

Speaker

Mr Antimo Marrazzo (Theory and Simulation of Materials (THEOS), and National Centre for Computational Design and Discovery of Novel Materials (MARVEL), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland)

Description

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. 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 that is a monolayer of jacutingaite, a naturally occurring layered mineral first discovered in 2008 in Brazil and recently synthesised. This system realises the paradigmatic Kane-Mele model for quantum spin Hall insulators (QSHIs) in a potentially exfoliable two-dimensional monolayer, with helical edge states that are robust and that can be manipulated exploiting a unique strong interplay between spin-orbit coupling, crystal-symmetry breaking and dielectric response.