Topological insulators from a chemical point of view

Research report (imported) 2012 - Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids

Authors
Felser, Claudia; Chadov, Stanislav; Müchler, Lukas; Yan, Binghai; Kübler, Jürgen; Zhang, Shou-Cheng1
Departments
Max-Planck-Institut für chemische Physik fester Stoffe, Dresden
1 Stanford University, Stanford, USA
Summary

Topological insulators (TIs) are a new quantum state of matter, which have attracted interest of condensed matter science. The materials are small band gap insulators with robust gapless surface states. Remarkable is that topological insulators can be predicted by ab initio theory and even understood from a chemist’s perspective. Herein, a simple recipe based on bonds, bands, symmetry, and nuclear charge will be given to motivate a systematic search for new topologically nontrivial materials.

For the full text, see the German version.

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