Highly-ordered wide bandgap materials for quantized anomalous Hall and magnetoelectric effects

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

Highly-ordered wide bandgap materials for quantized anomalous Hall and magnetoelectric effects

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.We acknowledge support by the University of the Basque Country (Grant Nos. GIC07IT36607 and IT-756-13), the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Grant Nos. FIS2013-48286-C02-02-P, FIS2013-48286-C02-01-P, and FIS2016-75862-P) and Tomsk State University Academic DI Mendeleev Fund Program in 2015 (research grant N 8.1.05.2015). Partial support by the Saint Petersburg State University project No. 15.61.202.2015 is also acknowledged. AE acknowledges financial support from DFG through priority program SPP1666 (Topological Insulators).Peer Reviewe