Environmental Doping-Induced Degradation of the Quantum Anomalous Hall Insulators

TL;DR

This study investigates how environmental exposure affects the stability of quantum anomalous Hall insulators, demonstrating that protective layers can significantly enhance their longevity and potential for practical quantum technology applications.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence that protective layers and controlled environments can prevent degradation of QAH insulators, advancing their viability for real-world use.

Findings

Unprotected QAH devices degrade rapidly in air

Argon environment preserves QAH properties for over 560 hours

Thin AlOx protection layer minimizes degradation in ambient conditions

Abstract

The quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) insulator is a topological quantum state with quantized Hall resistance and zero longitudinal resistance in the absence of an external magnetic field. The QAH insulator carries spin-polarized dissipation-free chiral edge current and thus provides a unique opportunity to develop energy-efficient transformative information technology. Despite promising advances on the QAH effect over the past decade, the QAH insulator has thus far eluded any practical applications. In addition to its low working temperature, the QAH state in magnetically doped topological insulator (TI) films/heterostructures usually deteriorates with time in ambient conditions. In this work, we prepare three QAH devices with similar initial properties and store them in different environments to investigate the evolution of their transport properties. The QAH device without a protection layer in air show clear degradation and becomes hole-doped with the charge neutral point shifting significantly to positive gate voltages. The QAH device kept in an argon glove box without a protection layer shows no measurable degradation after 560 hours and the device protected by a 3 nm AlOx protection layer in air shows minimal degradation with stable QAH properties. Our work shows a route to preserve the dissipation-free chiral edge state in QAH devices for potential applications in quantum information technology.