Otrokov, M. M., Menshchikova, T. V., Garcia Vergniory, M., Rusinov, I. P., Vyazovskaya, A. Yu., Koroteev, Y. M., Bihlmayer, G., Ernst, A., Echenique, P. M., Arnau, A., Chulkov, E. V.
Highly-ordered wide bandgap materials for quantized anomalous Hall and magnetoelectric effects
2D Materials 4, (2),pp 025082/1-8 (2017)
An interplay of spin-orbit coupling and intrinsic magnetism is known to give rise to the quantum
anomalous Hall and topological magnetoelectric effects under certain conditions. Their realization
could open access to low power consumption electronics as well as many fundamental phenomena
like image magnetic monopoles, Majorana fermions and others. Unfortunately, being realized very
recently, these effects are only accessible at extremely low temperatures and the lack of appropriate
materials that would enable the temperature increase is a most severe challenge. Here, we propose a
novel material platform with unique combination of properties making it perfectly suitable for the
realization of both effects at elevated temperatures. The key element of the computational material
design is an extension of a topological insulator (TI) surface by a thin film of ferromagnetic insulator, which is both structurally and compositionally compatible with the TI. Following this proposal we suggest a variety of specific systems and discuss their numerous advantages, in particular wide band gaps with the Fermi level located in the gap.
TH-2017-15