Observation of Surface Dirac Cone in High-Quality Ultrathin Epitaxial Bi2Se3 Topological Insulator on AlN(0001) Dielectric

Bi2Se3 topological insulators (TIs) are grown on AlN(0001)/Si(111) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. In a one-step growth at optimum temperature of 300 °C, Bi2Se3 bonds strongly with AlN without forming interfacial reaction layers. This produces high epitaxial quality Bi2Se3 single crystals with...

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Published inACS nano Vol. 8; no. 7; pp. 6614 - 6619
Main Authors Tsipas, Polychronis, Xenogiannopoulou, Evangelia, Kassavetis, Spyridon, Tsoutsou, Dimitra, Golias, Evangelos, Bazioti, Calliope, Dimitrakopulos, George P, Komninou, Philomela, Liang, Hu, Caymax, Matty, Dimoulas, Athanasios
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States American Chemical Society 22.07.2014
Subjects
gapless surface metallic states
Bi2Se3
topological insulators
ultrathin films
ARPES
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Summary:Bi2Se3 topological insulators (TIs) are grown on AlN(0001)/Si(111) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. In a one-step growth at optimum temperature of 300 °C, Bi2Se3 bonds strongly with AlN without forming interfacial reaction layers. This produces high epitaxial quality Bi2Se3 single crystals with a perfect registry with the substrate and abrupt interfaces, allowing thickness scaling down to three quintuple layers (QL) without jeopardizing film quality. It is found by angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy that, remarkably, Bi2Se3 films maintain the 3D TI properties at very low thickness of 3QL (∼2.88 nm), exhibiting top surface gapless metallic states in the form of a Dirac cone.
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content type line 23
ISSN:1936-0851
1936-086X
DOI:10.1021/nn502397x