Electron irradiation is investigated as a way to dope the topological insulator Bi2Te3. For this, p-type Bi2Te3 single crystals have been irradiated with 2.5 MeV electrons at room temperature and electrical measurements have been performed in-situ as well as ex-situ in magnetic fields up to 14 T. The defects created by irradiation act as electron donors allowing the compensation of the initial hole-type conductivity of the material as well as the conversion of the conductivity from p- to n-type. The changes in carrier concentration are investigated using Hall effect and Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) oscillations, clearly observable in the p-type samples before irradiation, but also after the irradiation-induced conversion of the conductivity to n-type. The SdH patterns observed for the magnetic field along the trigonal axis can be entirely explained assuming the contribution of only one valence and conduction band, respectively, and Zeeman-splitting of the orbital levels.
@article{arxiv.1312.0242,
title = {Doping of Bi2Te3 using electron irradiation},
author = {C. W. Rischau and B. Leridon and B. Fauqué and V. Metayer and C. J. van der Beek},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1312.0242},
year = {2013}
}