The non-trivial topology of three-dimensional topological insulators dictates the appearance of gapless Dirac surface states. Intriguingly, when made into a nanowire, quantum confinement leads to a peculiar gapped Dirac sub-band structure. This gap is useful for, e.g., future Majorana qubits based on TIs. Furthermore, these sub-bands can be manipulated by a magnetic flux and are an ideal platform for generating stable Majorana zero modes, playing a key role in topological quantum computing. However, direct evidence for the Dirac sub-bands in TI nanowires has not been reported so far. Here, using devices fabricated from thin bulk-insulating (Bi1−xSbx)2Te3 nanowires we show that non-equidistant resistance peaks, observed upon gate-tuning the chemical potential across the Dirac point, are the unique signatures of the quantized sub-bands. These TI nanowires open the way to address the topological mesoscopic physics, and eventually the Majorana physics when proximitized by an s-wave superconductor.
Wireless technology relies on the conversion of alternating electromagnetic fields into direct currents, a process known as rectification. Although rectifiers are normally based on semiconductor diodes, quantum mechanical non-reciprocal transport effects that enable a highly controllable rectification were recently discovered1–9. One such effect is magnetochiral anisotropy (MCA)6–9, in which the resistance of a material or a device depends on both the direction of the current flow and an applied magnetic field. However, the size of rectification possible due to MCA is usually extremely small because MCA relies on inversion symmetry breaking that leads to the manifestation of spin–orbit coupling, which is a relativistic effect6–8. In typical materials, the rectification coefficient γ due to MCA is usually ∣γ∣ ≲ 1 A−1 T−1 (refs. 8–12) and the maximum values reported so far are ∣γ∣ ≈ 100 A−1 T−1 in carbon nanotubes13 and ZrTe5 (ref. 14). Here, to overcome this limitation, we artificially break the inversion symmetry via an applied gate voltage in thin topological insulator (TI) nanowire heterostructures and theoretically predict that such a symmetry breaking can lead to a giant MCA effect. Our prediction is confirmed via experiments on thin bulk-insulating (Bi1−xSbx)2Te3 (BST) TI nanowires, in which we observe an MCA consistent with theory and ∣γ∣ ≈ 100,000 A−1 T−1, a very large MCA rectification coefficient in a normal conductor.
In a nanowire (NW) of a three-dimensional topological insulator (TI), the quantum confinement of topological surface states leads to a peculiar sub-band structure that is useful for generating Majorana bound states. Top-down fabrication of TINWs from a high-quality thin film would be a scalable technology with great design flexibility, but there has been no report on top-down-fabricated TINWs where the chemical potential can be tuned to the charge neutrality point (CNP). Here we present a top-down fabrication process for bulk-insulating TINWs etched from high-quality (Bi 1−x Sb x ) 2 Te 3 thin films without degradation. We show that the chemical potential can be gate-tuned to the CNP, and the resistance of the NW presents characteristic oscillations as functions of the gate voltage and the parallel magnetic field, manifesting the TI-subband physics. We further demonstrate the superconducting proximity effect in these TINWs, preparing the groundwork for future devices to investigate Majorana bound states.
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