Quantum oscillations in magnetothermopower measurements of the topological insulator Bi2Te3

Electron-hole asymmetry of the topological surface states in strained HgTe

Topological insulators are a new class of materials with an insulating bulk and topologically protected metallic surface states. Although it is widely assumed that these surface states display a Dirac-type dispersion that is symmetric above and below the Dirac point, this exact equivalence across the Fermi level has yet to be established experimentally. Here, we present a detailed transport study of the 3D topological insulator-strained HgTe that strongly challenges this prevailing viewpoint. First, we establish the existence of exclusively surface-dominated transport via the observation of an ambipolar surface quantum Hall effect and quantum oscillations in the Seebeck and Nernst effect. Second, we show that, whereas the thermopower is diffusion driven for surface electrons, both diffusion and phonon drag contributions are essential for the hole surface carriers. This distinct behavior in the thermoelectric response is explained by a strong deviation from the linear dispersion relation for the surface states, with a much flatter dispersion for holes compared with electrons. These findings show that the metallic surface states in topological insulators can exhibit both strong electron-hole asymmetry and a strong deviation from a linear dispersion but remain topologically protected.

Observation of huge surface hole mobility in the topological insulator Bi(0.91)Sb(0.09) (111)

We report the first direct measurement of transport properties of surface states in the topological insulator Bi(0.91)Sb(0.09) (111) from the weak-field Hall effect and Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations. We find that the holelike surface band displays an unexpectedly high mobility 23,000-85,000 cm(2)/V s, which is the highest mobility so far reported in bismuth-based topological insulators. This result provides the first quantitative assessment of the effect of alloy disorder on the mobility of surface states in topological insulators. We show that the 9% alloy disorder decreases the mobility of surface states by a factor of less than 2.3.