Magnetic Dirac Fermions and Chern Insulator Supported on Pristine Silicon Surface
Abstract
Emergence of ferromagnetism in non-magnetic semiconductors is strongly desirable, especially in topological materials thanks to the possibility to achieve quantum anomalous Hall effect. Based on first-principles calculations, we propose that for Si thin film grown on metal substrate, the pristine Si(111)-root3xroot3 surface with a spontaneous weak reconstruction has a strong tendency of ferromagnetism and nontrivial topological properties, characterized by spin polarized Dirac-fermion surface states. In contrast to conventional routes relying on introduction of alien charge carriers or specially patterned substrates, the spontaneous magnetic order and spin-orbit coupling on the pristine silicon surface together gives rise to quantized anomalous Hall effect with a finite Chern number C=-1. This work suggests exciting opportunities in silicon-based spintronics and quantum computing free from alien dopants or proximity effects.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1606.08945,
title = {Magnetic Dirac Fermions and Chern Insulator Supported on Pristine Silicon Surface},
author = {Huixia Fu and Zheng Liu and Chao Lian and Jin Zhang and Hui Li and Jia-Tao Sun and Sheng Meng},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.08945},
year = {2016}
}