Related papers: Polarity-driven surface metallicity in SmB$_6$
Low-temperature-resistivity plateau observed in $\rm SmB_6$ single crystal,which is due to surface, not bulk, conduction has been confirmed from electrical transport measurements. Recently, the correlation between bulk thermodynamic…
Long known to have thermodynamic properties at odds with its insulating electrical transport, SmB6 has been the subject of great debate as it is unclear whether its unusual properties are related to the bulk or novel metallic surface…
Samarium hexaboride is a topological Kondo insulator, with metallic surface states manifesting from its insulating band structure. Since the insulating bulk itself is driven by strong correlations, both the bulk and surface host compelling…
The Kondo insulator SmB6 has long been known to exhibit low temperature transport anomalies whose origin is of great interest. Here we uniquely access the surface electronic structure of the anomalous transport regime by combining…
We investigate the physical mechanisms for achieving an electrical control of conventional spin-singlet superconductivity in thin films by focusing on the role of surface orbital polarization. Assuming a multi-orbital description of the…
Proximity-induced superconductivity in three dimensional (3D) topological insulators forms a new quantum phase of matter and accommodates exotic quasiparticles such as Majorana bound states. One of the biggest drawbacks of the commonly…
We review the class of materials known as polar metals, in which polarity and metallicity coexist in the same phase. While the notion of polar metals was first invoked more than 50 years ago, their practical realization has proved…
SmB$_6$ exhibits a small (15-20 meV) bandgap at low temperatures due to hybridized $d$ and $f$ electrons, a tiny (3 meV) transport activation energy $(E_{A})$ above 4 K, and surface states accessible to transport below 2 K. We study its…
YbB$_6$ is a predicted topological insulator, with experimental evidence for conducting surface states of yet-unproven origin. However, its lack of a natural cleavage plane, and resultant surface-dependent polarity, has obscured its study.…
Layered systems shows anisotropic transport properties. The interlayer conductivity show a general temperature dependence for a wide class of materials. This can be understood if conduction occurs in two different channels activated at…
In topological insulators (TIs), metallic surface conductance saturates the insulating bulk resistance with de- creasing temperature, resulting in resistivity plateau at low temperatures as a transport signature originating from metallic…
SmB$_6$, known to be a Kondo insulator, has received intense scrutiny in recent years due to its paradoxical experimental signatures: while some quantities show an insulating behavior, others point to a metallic state. This has led to the…
The Kondo insulator SmB$_6$ has long been known to display anomalous transport behavior at low temperatures, T$<5$ K. In this temperatures range, a plateau is observed in the dc resistivity, contrary to the exponential divergence expected…
Several technical issues and challenges are identified and investigated for the planar tunneling spectroscopy of the topological Kondo insulator SmB$_6$. Contrasting behaviors of the tunnel junctions prepared in two different ways are…
After the theoretical prediction that SmB$_6$ is a topological Kondo insulator, there has been an explosion of studies on the SmB$_6$ surface. However, there is not yet an agreement on even the most basic quantities such as the surface…
The adsorption of hydrogen on the polar Zn-ended ZnO(0001) surface has been investigated by density functional {\it ab-initio} calculations. An on top H(1x1) ordered overlayer with genuine H-Zn chemical bonds is shown to be energetically…
Utilizing a combination of dynamical mean field theory and density functional theory (DMFT/DFT), it has been theoretically proposed that PuB$_6$ is a strongly correlated topological insulator characterized by nontrivial $\mathbf{Z}_{2}$…
Planar tunneling spectroscopy of the Kondo insulator SmB$_6$ suggests that an interaction between the surface Dirac fermions and the bulk spin excitons results in incompletely protected topological surface states. To gain further insight…
Polar metals, commonly defined by the coexistence of polar crystal structure and metallicity, are thought to be scarce because the long-range electrostatic fields favoring the polar structure are expected to be fully screened by the…
The true topological nature of the Kondo insulator SmB$_6$ remains to be unveiled. Our previous tunneling study not only found evidence for the existence of surface Dirac fermions, but it also uncovered that they inherently interact with…