Top-Down Fabrication of Bulk-Insulating Topological Insulator Nanowires for Quantum Devices.

In a nanowire (NW) of a three-dimensional topological insulator (TI), the quantum confinement of topological surface states leads to a peculiar sub-band structure that is useful for generating Majorana bound states. Top-down fabrication of TINWs from a high-quality thin film would be a scalable technology with great design flexibility, but there has been no report on top-down-fabricated TINWs where the chemical potential can be tuned to the charge neutrality point (CNP). Here we present a top-down fabrication process for bulk-insulating TINWs etched from high-quality (BiSb)Te thin films without degradation.

Giant magnetochiral anisotropy from quantum-confined surface states of topological insulator nanowires.

Wireless technology relies on the conversion of alternating electromagnetic fields into direct currents, a process known as rectification. Although rectifiers are normally based on semiconductor diodes, quantum mechanical non-reciprocal transport effects that enable a highly controllable rectification were recently discovered. One such effect is magnetochiral anisotropy (MCA), in which the resistance of a material or a device depends on both the direction of the current flow and an applied magnetic field.