Related papers: Bulk and surface properties of SmB6
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.…
Kondo insulators are strongly correlated system in which a clean insulating gap emerges only at very low temperature due to many-body effects involving localized $f$-electrons. However, certain Kondo insulators, like SmB$_6$ and…
Recent experiments on Kondo insulator SmB6 have revealed bulk excitations that could be Fermions without charge. This would lead to a residual linear term in the thermal conductivity that was not observed universally in experiments. To…
Kondo insulators are primary candidates in the search for strongly correlated topological quantum phases, which may host topological order, fractionalization, and non-Abelian statistics. Within some Kondo insulators, the hybridization gap…
Electron-hole mixing-induced fine structure in alkaline earth hexaborides leads to lower energy (temperature) scales, and thus stronger tendency toward an excitonic instability, than in their doped counterparts (viz. Ca(1-x)La(x)B(6),…
We have investigated the band structure and the band symmetry of mixed-valence insulator SmB$_{6}$ systematically within the density functional theory (DFT). We have analyzed the symmetries and characters of Sm $4f$ and $5d$ bands near the…
Possible topological nature of Kondo and mixed valence insulators has been a recent topic of interest in condensed matter physics. Attention has focused on SmB6, which has long been known to exhibit low temperature transport anomaly, whose…
Comprehensive study using DC transport, specific heat, magnetization, and two-coil mutual inductance measurements unveils an understanding of three temperature regimes in SmB$_6$: (i) $T \geq T^{*}$ ($\sim66$K), (ii) $T_g$ ($\sim40$ K)…
We utilize terahertz time domain spectroscopy to investigate thin films of the heavy fermion compound SmB6, a prototype Kondo insulator. Temperature dependent terahertz (THz) conductivity measurements reveal a rapid decrease in the Drude…
The band inversion in topological phase matters bring exotic physical properties such as the emergence of a topologically protected surface states. They strongly influence the surface electronic structures of the investigated materials and…
According to previous interpretations of experimental data, sodium-scandium double-cation borohydride NaSc(BH$_4$)$_4$ crystallizes in the crystallographic space group $Cmcm$ where each sodium (scandium) atom is surrounded by six scandium…
We review the thin film growth, chemistry, and physical properties of Group 4-6 transition-metal diboride (TMB2) thin films with AlB2-type crystal structure (Strukturbericht designation C32). Industrial applications are growing rapidly as…
We have used ion-irradiation to damage the (001) surfaces of SmB_6 single crystals to varying depths, and have measured the resistivity as a function of temperature for each depth of damage. We observe a reduction in the residual…
Motivated by the observation of light surface states in SmB6, we examine the effects of surface Kondo breakdown in topological Kondo insulators. We present both numerical and analytic results which show that the decoupling of the localized…
Single crystals of Sc5Rh6Sn18 were grown from Sn-flux. The crystal structure (SG: I41/acd, a = 13.5529(2) {\AA}, c = 27.0976(7) {\AA}) was studied by high-resolution X-ray diffraction on powder and single crystal material as well as by TEM.…
Thanks to their favorable electronic and optical properties, sodium-potassium-antimonides are an emerging class of crystals used as photocathodes in particle accelerators. The persisting challenges related to the synthesis and…
Heavy fermion materials have been a rich playground for strongly correlated physics for decades. However, engineering tunable and synthesizable heavy fermion materials remains a challenge. We strive to integrate heavy fermion properties…
Topological surface states, a new kind of electronic state of matter, have recently been observed on the cleaved surfaces of crystals of a handful of small band gap semiconductors. The underlying chemical factors that enable these states…
Mg$_2$IrH$_6$ is a metastable complex metal hydride with a predicted superconducting transition temperature as high as 170 K at ambient pressure. Following the synthesis of isomorphic, insulating Mg$_2$IrH$_5$ at low pressure,…
Symmetry breaking (SB) has proven to be a powerful approach for describing quantum materials: strong correlation, mass renormalization, and complex phase transitions are among the phenomena that SB can capture, even when coupled to a…