Topological quantum phase transition and superconductivity induced by pressure in the bismuth tellurohalide BiTeI

TL;DR

This study investigates how applying high pressure induces a topological quantum phase transition and superconductivity in BiTeI and BiTeBr, revealing new electronic ground states in these topological materials.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence of pressure-induced topological phase transition and superconductivity in BiTeI and BiTeBr, supported by theoretical calculations.

Findings

Resistivity shows a minimum at ~3 GPa indicating a topological transition.

Superconductivity appears in both compounds with Tc up to 5.2 K.

Superconducting Tc increases with pressure then decreases after reaching a maximum.

Abstract

A pressure-induced topological quantum phase transition has been theoretically predicted for the semiconductor BiTeI with giant Rashba spin splitting. In this work, the evolution of the electrical transport properties in BiTeI and BiTeBr is investigated under high pressure. The pressure-dependent resistivity in a wide temperature range passes through a minimum at around 3 GPa, indicating the predicted transition in BiTeI. Superconductivity is observed in both BiTeI and BiTeBr while the resistivity at higher temperatures still exhibits semiconducting behavior. Theoretical calculations suggest that the superconductivity may develop from the multi-valley semiconductor phase. The superconducting transition temperature Tc increases with applied pressure and reaches a maximum value of 5.2 K at 23.5 GPa for BiTeI (4.8 K at 31.7 GPa for BiTeBr), followed by a slow decrease. Our results demonstrate that BiTeX (X = I, Br) compounds with non-trivial topology of electronic states display new ground states upon compression.