Effect of band-alignment operation on carrier transport in Bi 2Se3 topological insulator

Abstract

Band-alignment induced current modulation in Bi2Se3 three-dimensional topological insulator slab has been investigated by quantum transport simulations for three different device designs, one for purely lateral transport and other two with vertical transport. Non-Equilibrium Green Function formalism has been deployed to understand the transport mechanism in band-alignment devices to appraise the possibility of a 3D-TI based resonant device. A resonance condition is observed when the Dirac-points (bands) are aligned. This results in the maximum current at resonance for the design with only lateral transport. However, current ratio between resonant and non-resonant condition is found to be relatively small and strong temperature dependence is also noticed. The other two designs with vertical transport have degraded transfer characteristics, although from state-of-art literature they are expected to manifest nearly an ideal resonance peak. The physical insights for these observations have been posited along with the suggestions for attaining close to an ideal operation for the first design, which we also suggest for the pursuit in the future for spintronic oscillators and analog multipliers based on band-alignment induced resonance.