Carrier transport in Bi2Se3 topological insulator slab

Gaurav Gupta*, Hsin Lin, Arun Bansil, Mansoor Bin Abdul Jalil, Gengchiau Liang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Abstractv Electron transport in Bi2Se3 topological insulator slabs is investigated in the thermal activation regime (>50 K) both in the absence (ballistic) and presence of weak and strong acoustic phonon scattering using the non-equilibrium Green function approach. Resistance of the slab is simulated as a function of temperature for a range of slab thicknesses and effective doping in order to gain a handle on how various factors interact and compete to determine the overall resistance of the slab. If the Bi2Se3 slab is biased at the Dirac point, resistance is found to display an insulating trend even for strong electron-phonon coupling strength. However, when the Fermi-level lies close to the bulk conduction band (heavy electron doping), phonon scattering can dominate and result in a metallic behavior, although the insulating trend is retained in the limit of ballistic transport. Depending on values of the operating parameters, the temperature dependence of the slab is found to exhibit a remarkably complex behavior, which ranges from insulating to metallic, and includes cases where the resistance exhibits a local maximum, much like the contradictory behaviors seen experimentally in various experiments.

Original languageEnglish
Article number11990
Pages (from-to)10-19
Number of pages10
JournalPhysica E: Low-Dimensional Systems and Nanostructures
Volume74
DOIs
StatePublished - 2 Jul 2015

Keywords

  • Acoustic Phonons
  • NEGF
  • Quantum Transport
  • Resistance
  • Topological Insulator

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