Band Meandering due to Charged Impurity Effects and Carrier Transport in Ternary Topological Insulators

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Sharma, Kanav, R, Niranjay K, Mesh, Infan S, Gopal, Radha Krishna, Mitra, Chiranjib
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Sharma, Kanav
R, Niranjay K
Mesh, Infan S
Gopal, Radha Krishna
Mitra, Chiranjib
author_facet Sharma, Kanav
R, Niranjay K
Mesh, Infan S
Gopal, Radha Krishna
Mitra, Chiranjib
contents Controlling charged impurity disorder is a critical challenge for realizing the promise of topological insulator (TI) surfaces in devices. While doping is often used to tune the chemical potential, its impact on the fundamental disorder landscape remains poorly understood. Here, we investigate this effect in ternary (Bi,Sb)$_2$Te$_3$ (BST) thin films and their indium-doped (IBST) counterparts. Gate-dependent transport reveals that indium doping increases charged impurity density by an order of magnitude, which in turn reduces the characteristic size of disorder-induced charge puddles from $\sim$91 nm to $\sim$38 nm. This amplified disorder enhances Coulomb scattering and suppresses field-effect mobility, directly demonstrating how doping-induced compensation degrades surface transport. Our work establishes doping as a powerful method to probe the limits of topological protection and underscores that defect suppression, not just compensation, is essential for developing high-performance TI devices.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_08579
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Band Meandering due to Charged Impurity Effects and Carrier Transport in Ternary Topological Insulators
Sharma, Kanav
R, Niranjay K
Mesh, Infan S
Gopal, Radha Krishna
Mitra, Chiranjib
Materials Science
Controlling charged impurity disorder is a critical challenge for realizing the promise of topological insulator (TI) surfaces in devices. While doping is often used to tune the chemical potential, its impact on the fundamental disorder landscape remains poorly understood. Here, we investigate this effect in ternary (Bi,Sb)$_2$Te$_3$ (BST) thin films and their indium-doped (IBST) counterparts. Gate-dependent transport reveals that indium doping increases charged impurity density by an order of magnitude, which in turn reduces the characteristic size of disorder-induced charge puddles from $\sim$91 nm to $\sim$38 nm. This amplified disorder enhances Coulomb scattering and suppresses field-effect mobility, directly demonstrating how doping-induced compensation degrades surface transport. Our work establishes doping as a powerful method to probe the limits of topological protection and underscores that defect suppression, not just compensation, is essential for developing high-performance TI devices.
title Band Meandering due to Charged Impurity Effects and Carrier Transport in Ternary Topological Insulators
topic Materials Science
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08579