Surface-dominated conduction in a 6 nm thick Bi2Se3 thin film.

He, Liang; Xiu, Faxian; Yu, Xinxin; Teague, Marcus; Jiang, Wanjun; Fan, Yabin; Kou, Xufeng; Lang, Murong et al. · Nano Lett · 2012

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

We report a direct observation of surface dominated conduction in an intrinsic Bi(2)Se(3) thin film with a thickness of six quintuple layers grown on lattice-matched CdS (0001) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations from the topological surface states suggest that the Fermi level falls inside the bulk band gap and is 53 ± 5 meV above the Dirac point, which is in agreement with 70 ± 20 meV obtained from scanning tunneling spectroscopies. Our results demonstrate a great potential of producing genuine topological insulator devices using Dirac Fermions of the surface states, when the film thickness is pushed to nanometer range.

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