Half-Heusler compounds exhibit a remarkable variety of emergent properties such as heavy-fermion behaviour, unconventional superconductivity and magnetism. Several of these compounds have been predicted to host topologically non-trivial electronic structures. Remarkably, recent theoretical studies have indicated the possibility to induce non-trivial topological surface states in an otherwise trivial half-Heusler system by strain engineering. Here, using magneto-transport measurements and first principles DFT-based simulations, we demonstrate topological surface states on strained [110] oriented thin films of YPdBi grown on (100) MgO. These topological surface states arise in an otherwise trivial semi-metal purely driven by strain. Furthermore, we observe the onset of superconductivity in these strained films highlighting the possibility of engineering a topological superconducting state. Our results demonstrate the critical role played by strain in engineering novel topological states in thin film systems for developing next-generation spintronic devices.
@article{arxiv.2009.03018,
title = {Strain driven emergence of topological non-triviality in YPdBi thin films},
author = {Vishal Bhardwaj and Anupam Bhattacharya and Shivangi Srivastava and Vladimir V. Khovaylo and Jhuma Sannigrahi and Niladri Banerjee and Brajesh K. Mani and Ratnamala Chatterjee},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.03018},
year = {2021}
}