Topological Insulating States in Laterally Patterned Ordinary Semiconductors

Prof. Oleg Sushkov

School of Physics, The University of New South Wales, Sydney

3:30 pm Friday, 23 August 2013, EN102 Lecture Theatre (EN Building), Hawthorn.

We propose that ordinary semiconductors with large spin-orbit coupling (SOC), such as GaAs, can host stable, robust, and tunable topological states in the presence of quantum confinement and superimposed  potentials with hexagonal symmetry.
We show that the electronic gaps which support chiral spin edge states can be as large as the electronic bandwidth  in the heterostructure miniband. The existing lithographic technology can produce  a topological insulator (TI) operating at temperature 10-100K.
Improvement of lithographic techniques will open the way to tunable room temperature TI.

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