DOI: 10.1126/science.1148047. Quantum Spin Hall Insulator State in HgTe Quantum Wells

Quantum Spin Hall Insulator State in HgTe Quantum Wells

10.1126/science.1148047

Crossref journal-article

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Science (221)

Abstract

Recent theory predicted that the quantum spin Hall effect, a fundamentally new quantum state of matter that exists at zero external magnetic field, may be realized in HgTe/(Hg,Cd)Te quantum wells. We fabricated such sample structures with low density and high mobility in which we could tune, through an external gate voltage, the carrier conduction from n-type to p-type, passing through an insulating regime. For thin quantum wells with well width d < 6.3 nanometers, the insulating regime showed the conventional behavior of vanishingly small conductance at low temperature. However, for thicker quantum wells ( d > 6.3 nanometers), the nominally insulating regime showed a plateau of residual conductance close to 2 e 2 / h , where e is the electron charge and h is Planck's constant. The residual conductance was independent of the sample width, indicating that it is caused by edge states. Furthermore, the residual conductance was destroyed by a small external magnetic field. The quantum phase transition at the critical thickness, d = 6.3 nanometers, was also independently determined from the magnetic field–induced insulator-to-metal transition. These observations provide experimental evidence of the quantum spin Hall effect.

Authors 8

Markus König (first)
Steffen Wiedmann (additional)
Christoph Brüne (additional)
Andreas Roth (additional)
Hartmut Buhmann (additional)
Laurens W. Molenkamp (additional)
Xiao-Liang Qi (additional)
Shou-Cheng Zhang (additional)

References 27 Referenced 5,268

10.1126/science.1087128
10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.126603
10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.156804
10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.146802
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10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.106401
10.1103/PhysRevB.73.045322
10.1038/nature04233
10.1038/nature04235
X. Dai T. L. Hughes X.-L. Qi Z. Fang S.-C. Zhang http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.1516 (2007).
Similar mass domain walls have been proposed to occur in three-dimensional in PbTe/(Pb Sn)Te heterostructures where the \batchmode \documentclass[fleqn 10pt legalpaper]{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amsmath} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \(L_{6}^{{\pm}}\) \end{document} bands change position as a function of Sn concentration ( 25 26 ).
10.1103/PhysRevB.72.035321
10.1002/pssc.200775402
Well thicknesses have been calibrated by x-ray reflectivity measurements at the DESY synchrotron in Hamburg Germany.
10.1088/0268-1242/21/4/015
A. Pfeuffer-Jeschke thesis University of Würzburg Germany (2000).
10.1103/PhysRevB.57.14772
10.1063/1.1602170
10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.076804
We have observed a similar independence of resistance on sample width in the d = 7 nm L = 20.0 μm devices showing that also in these larger structures the conductance is completely dominated by edge channels.
FWHM of the magnetoresistance peak is about 10 mT at 30 mK increasing to 28 mT at 1.4 K.
10.1126/science.1105514
10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.047204
B. A. Volkov, O. A. Pankratov, JETP Lett.42, 178 (1985). / JETP Lett. (1985)
10.1103/PhysRevLett.57.2967
We thank A. Bernevig X. Dai Z. Fang T. Hughes C. X. Liu and C. J. Wu for insightful discussions; C. R. Becker and V. Hock for sample preparation; and C. Kumpf for calibrating the well widths of the HgTe samples. This work is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (grant SFB 410); the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development (grant 881/05); the NSF (grant DMR-0342832); the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences under contract DE-AC03-76SF00515; and Focus Center Research Program (FCRP) Center on Functional Engineered Nanoarchitectonics (FENA).

Dates

Type	When
Created	17 years, 11 months ago (Sept. 20, 2007, 5:08 p.m.)
Deposited	1 year, 7 months ago (Jan. 9, 2024, 10:01 p.m.)
Indexed	6 hours, 50 minutes ago (Aug. 29, 2025, 6:05 a.m.)
Issued	17 years, 9 months ago (Nov. 2, 2007)
Published	17 years, 9 months ago (Nov. 2, 2007)
Published Print	17 years, 9 months ago (Nov. 2, 2007)

Funders 0

None

BibTeX

@article{Ko_nig_2007, title={Quantum Spin Hall Insulator State in HgTe Quantum Wells}, volume={318}, ISSN={1095-9203}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1148047}, DOI={10.1126/science.1148047}, number={5851}, journal={Science}, publisher={American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)}, author={König, Markus and Wiedmann, Steffen and Brüne, Christoph and Roth, Andreas and Buhmann, Hartmut and Molenkamp, Laurens W. and Qi, Xiao-Liang and Zhang, Shou-Cheng}, year={2007}, month=nov, pages={766–770} }

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