High-Temperature Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect in n-p Codoped Topological Insulators

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new method using n-p codoping in topological insulators to realize the quantum anomalous Hall effect at significantly higher temperatures, demonstrated through numerical simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel kinetic pathway for high-temperature QAHE via n-p codoping, supported by numerical proof-of-principle in V-I codoped Sb2Te3.

Findings

QAHE observed at temperatures of at least 50 Kelvin

Quantized Hall conductance achieved at low dopant concentrations

Method potentially applicable to other topological insulators

Abstract

The quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE) is a fundamental quantum transport phenomenon that manifests as a quantized transverse conductance in response to a longitudinally applied electric field in the absence of an external magnetic field, and promises to have immense application potentials in future dissipation-less quantum electronics. Here we present a novel kinetic pathway to realize the QAHE at high temperatures by $n$-$p$ codoping of three-dimensional topological insulators. We provide proof-of-principle numerical demonstration of this approach using vanadium-iodine (V-I) codoped Sb$_2$Te$_3$ and demonstrate that, strikingly, even at low concentrations of $\sim$2\% V and $\sim$1\% I, the system exhibits a quantized Hall conductance, the tell-tale hallmark of QAHE, at temperatures of at least $\sim$ 50 Kelvin, which is three orders of magnitude higher than the typical temperatures at which it has been realized so far. The proposed approach is conceptually general and may shed new light in experimental realization of high-temperature QAHE.