In the recently discovered class of materials known as topological
insulators, the presence of strong spin-orbit coupling causes certain
topological invariants in the bulk to differ from their values in vacuum. The
sudden change of invariants at the interface results in metallic, time reversal
invariant surface states whose properties are useful for applications in
spintronics and quantum computation. However, a key challenge is to fabricate
these materials on the nanoscale appropriate for devices and probing the
surface. To this end we have produced 2 nm thick nanocrystals of the
topological insulator Bi2โSe3โ via mechanical exfoliation. For crystals
thinner than 10 nm we observe the emergence of an additional mode in the Raman
spectrum. The emergent mode intensity together with the other results presented
here provide a recipe for production and thickness characterization of
Bi2โSe3โ nanocrystals.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures (accepted for publication in Applied Physics
Letters