# Topological Properties of \tau-Type Organic Conductors with a Checkerboard Lattice

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that au-type organic layered conductors with a checkerboard lattice can host topological phases, featuring Dirac cones, SOC-induced gaps, and helical edge states, suggesting they are organic topological insulators with potential spin Hall effects.

## Contribution

It reveals the emergence of topological phases in au-type organic conductors with a checkerboard lattice, highlighting the role of SOC and strain in creating topologically nontrivial states.

## Key findings

- Presence of quadratic band touching in the conduction and valence bands.
- Splitting into Dirac cones under uniaxial strain.
- Existence of helical edge states indicating topological insulator behavior.

## Abstract

Although the topological phases are difficult to be realized in organic molecular crystals, we demonstrate here that they can emerge in the \tau-type organic layered conductors, \tau-(EDO-S,S-DMEDT-TTF)_2X_{1+y} and \tau-(P-S,S-DMEDT-TTF)_2X_{1+y} (X=AuBr_2, I_3, IBr_2), where EDO-S,S-DMEDT-TTF and P-S,S-DMEDT-TTF denote the planar donor molecules ethylenedioxy-S,S-dimethyl(ethylenedithio)tetrathiafulvalene and pyrazino-S,S-dimethyl(ethylenedithio)tetrathiafulvalene, respectively. The conducting layers of these conductors have a highly symmetric checkerboard structure, which can be regarded as a modified Mielke lattice. Because their electronic structure inherits that of the Mielke lattice, their conduction and valence bands exhibits the quadratic band touching. The contact point splits into a pair of Dirac cones under uniaxial strain which breaks C_4-symmetry. In \tau-type conductors, we can expect rather large spin-orbit coupling (SOC) as organic conductors. We show that the SOC in this case opens a topologically nontrivial gap at the band contact point, and the helical edge states exist in the gap. The actual \tau-type conductors could be regarded as heavily-doped topological insulators, which could exhibit finite spin Hall effect.

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Source: https://tomesphere.com/paper/1907.10574