Bending Strain Engineering of Spin Transport in Quantum Spin Hall Systems: Topological Nano-mechanospintronics

TL;DR

This paper introduces bending strain engineering as a novel method to control spin transport in quantum spin Hall systems, enabling tunable spin currents while maintaining topological protection, with potential applications in nano-mechanospintronics.

Contribution

It presents a new approach to manipulate spin transport using bending strain in topological systems, supported by model and first-principles calculations, and demonstrates feasibility with a Bi/Cl/Si(111) example.

Findings

Bending strain can generate non-zero spin currents in QSH systems.

Topological edge states remain protected under bending strain.

Spin orientations can be dramatically tuned by self-bending behaviors.

Abstract

Quantum spin Hall (QSH) system can exhibit exotic spin transport phenomena, mediated by its topological edge states. Here a novel concept of bending strain engineering to tune the spin transport properties of a QSH system is demonstrated by both model and first-principles calculations. Interestingly, we discover that bending strain can be used to mitigate the spin conservation of a QSH system to generate a non-zero spin current (SC), meanwhile the preservation of time reversal symmetry renders its edge states topologically protected to transport robust SC without back scattering. This novel physics mechanism can be applied to effectively tune the SC and spin Hall current in a QSH system by control of its bending curvature. Furthermore, the realization of QSH systems with controllable curvature can be achieved by the concept of "topological nanomechnical architecture". Taking Bi/Cl/Si(111) as a material example, we demonstrate that the relative spin orientations between two edge states of a Bi/Cl/Si(111) film can indeed be tuned dramatically by its self-bending behaviors induced by the pre-designed inherent strain. Therefore, this concept of "bending strain engineering of spins" via topological nanomechanical architecture affords a promising route towards the realization of topological nano-mechanospintronics.