Non-trivial topological phases in transition metal rich half-Heusler Oxides

TL;DR

This paper proposes a material design approach to realize large negative band inversion strength in cubic half-Heusler oxides, identifying promising topological phases and analyzing the effects of strain on surface states for potential spintronics applications.

Contribution

It introduces a new method to achieve non-trivial topological phases in cubic half-Heusler oxides by manipulating their crystal phases and compositions, highlighting the $ ext{α}$-phase of RbAuO as particularly promising.

Findings

Nine $ ext{α}$-phase HH oxides exhibit non-trivial topological phases.

The $ ext{α}$-phase of RbAuO has a band inversion strength of -1.29 eV.

Strain fields influence the topological surface states of RbAuO.

Abstract

Topological Insulators with gapless surface states and insulating bulk in non-centrosymmetric cubic systems have been extensively explored following the discovery of two-dimensional quantum spin hall effect in zincblende HgTe. In such systems the negative band inversion strength E$_{BIS}$ ($=$ E$_{\Gamma_6} -$ E$_{\Gamma_8} <$ 0) governs the robustness of the non-trivial topological states at ambient conditions. Hence, realizing large negative values of E$_{BIS}$ has been a guiding motivation of several investigations reported in literature. Here, we present a material design approach which can be employed to realize large negative values of E$_{BIS}$ in cubic materials such as half-Heusler (HH) oxides with 18 valence electron configurations. We explore 27 HH oxides of the form ABO (A = Li, K, Rb; B = Cu, Ag, Au) in $\alpha$-, $\beta$-, and $\gamma$-phase (by placing transition metal atom at different Wyckoff positions) for their non-trivial topological phase. Off these three phases, we found that, the $\alpha$-phase of nine HH oxides (wherein the transition metal atoms occupy 4a Wyckoff positions in the crystal structure) is the most promising with non-trivial topological phase which is governed by the mass-darwin relativistic effects enhancing E$_{BIS}$. Whereas the other phases were found to be either trivial semiconductors or semimetals or metals and most of them being dynamically unstable. We focus on RbAuO in $\alpha$-phase with E$_{BIS}$ of $-$ 1.29 eV and the effect of strain fields on the topological surface states of this compound. We conclude that the $\alpha$-phase of HH oxide presented here can be synthesized experimentally for diverse room temperature applications in spintronics and nanoelectronics.