Electronic Transport in Bismuth Selenide in the Topological Insulator Regime

Abstract

The 3D topological insulators (TIs) have an insulating bulk but spin-momentum coupled metallic surface states stemming from band inversion due to strong spin-orbit interaction, whose existence is guaranteed by the topology of the band structure of the insulator. While the STI surface state has been studied spectroscopically by e.g. photoemission and scanned probes, transport experiments have failed to demonstrate clear signature of the STI due to high level of bulk conduction. In this thesis, I present experimental results on the transport properties of TI material Bi₂Se₃ in the absence of bulk conduction (TI regime), achieved by applying novel p-type doping methods. Field effect transistors consisting of thin (thickness: 5-17 nm) Bi₂Se₃ are fabricated by mechanical exfoliation of single crystals, and a combination of conventional dielectric (300 nm thick SiO₂) and electrochemical or chemical gating methods are used to move the Fermi energy through the surface Dirac point inside bulk band gap, revealing the ambipolar gapless nature of transport in the Bi₂Se₃ surface states. The minimum conductivity of the topological surface state is understood within the self-consistent theory of Dirac electrons in the presence of charged impurities. The intrinsic finite-temperature resistivity of the topological surface state due to electron-acoustic phonon scattering is measured to be 60 times larger than that of graphene largely due to the smaller Fermi and sound velocities in Bi₂Se₃, which will have implications for topological electronic devices operating at room temperature. Along with semi-classical Boltzmann transport, I also discuss 2D weak anti-localization (WAL) behavior of the topological surface states. By investigating gate-tuned WAL behavior in thin (5-17 nm) TI films, I show that WAL in the TI regime is extraordinarily sensitive to the hybridization induced quantum mechanical tunneling between top and bottom topological surfaces, and interplay of phase coherence time and inter-surface tunneling time results in a crossover from two decoupled (top and bottom) symplectic 2D metal surfaces to a coherently coupled single channel. Furthermore, a complete suppression of WAL is observed in the 5 nm thick Bi₂Se₃ film which was found to occur when the hybridization gap becomes comparable to the disorder strength.