Research Activities

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The main research areas of the topological quantum chemistry group are related to the design, synthesis and investigation of new quantum materials with topological properties (1,2) and Heusler compounds (3, 4, 5). Design rules that enable the finding of materials with required. Based on the structural and electronic structure relation between semiconductors such as GaAs or HgTe it is possible to design new topological insulators within the class of Heusler compounds XYZ with C1b structure type, semiconductors with additional properties such as superconductivity or magnetism (6). This allows eventually the realization of Majorana fermions and quantum anomalous Hall effect (6). Further examples of our work in topology include: Bernevig and Felser: topological quantum chemistry (1, 2) and new Fermions (7) and the subgroup of chiral Fermions (8, 9); discovery of Weyl fermions (10), in nonmagnetic NbP and TaAs(11, 12, 13, 14) and WP2 (15, 16, 17). The axial gravitational anomaly was identified with co-workers around Gooth in NbP (18). We predicted the magnetic Weyl semimetals in Mn3Ge, Mn3Sn Co2MnGa and Co3Sn2S3 (19, 20, 21, 22) and realized by us as high quality single crystals and proven in collaboration with groups from Princeton, Weizmann and Oxford in Mn3Ge
(23), Co3Sn2S2 (22, 24, 25) and Co2MnGa (26, 27).

We have an elegant set of design rules for Heusler compounds (3 - 5) that allow for the design for many applications including quantum and energy applications. Heusler compounds with X2YZ with L21 and XYZ with C1b structure type – show the same broad variety of properties comparable to the perovskites, including topological insulators (6), Kondo behavior, non-centrosymmetric superconductivity and conventional, tunable magnetic properties (28), non-collinear magnetism (29, 23), semiconductivity, magnetoresistance effects,  Li-ion-conductivity and other physical properties. Examples are the semiconducting Half Heusler compounds for thermoelectric applications (4) and the ferrimagnetic  Mn2YZ Heusler compounds for Skyrmions (30) and spintronic applications (31, 5, 23). These concepts can be transferred to other families of materials such as perovskites and skutterudites.

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