Topological insulators (TIs) are an unusual phase of quantum matter with nontrivial spin-momentum-locked topological surface states (TSS). The electrical detection of spin-momentum-locking of TSS has been lacking till very recently. Many of the results are from samples with significant bulk conduction, such as Bi2Se3, where it can be challenging to separate the surface and bulk contribution to the spin signal. Here, we report spin potentiometric measurements in flakes exfoliated from bulk insulating Bi2Te2Se crystals, using two outside nonmagnetic contacts for driving a DC spin helical current and a middle ferromagnetic (FM)-Al2O3 contact for detecting spin polarization. The voltage measured by the FM electrode exhibits a hysteretic step-like change when sweeping an in-plane magnetic field between opposite directions along the easy axis of the FM contact. Importantly, the direction of the voltage change can be reversed by reversing the direction of current, and the amplitude of the change as measured by the difference in the detector voltage between opposite FM magnetization increases linearly with increasing current, consistent with the current-induced spin polarization of spin-momentum-locked TSS. Our work directly demonstrates the electrical injection and detection of spin polarization in TI and may enable utilization of TSS for applications in nanoelectronics and spintronics.

The discovery of spin-polarized states at the surface of three-dimensional topological insulators (TI) like Bi 2 Te 3 and Bi 2 Se 3 motivates intense interests in possible electrical measurements demonstrating unique signatures of these unusual states. Here we show that a three-terminal potentiometric set-up can be used to probe them by measuring the voltage change of a detecting magnet upon reversing its magnetization. We present numerical results using a nonequilibrium Green's function (NEGF)-based model to show the corresponding signal quantitatively in various transport regimes. We then provide an analytical expression for the resistance (the measured voltage difference divided by an applied current) that agrees with NEGF results well in both ballistic and diffusive limits. This expression is applicable to TI surface states, two-dimensional electrons with Rashba spin-split bands, and any combination of multiple channels, including bulk parallel states in TI, which makes it useful in analyzing experimental results.

We use the non-equilibrium Green function (NEGF) method in the ballistic limit to provide a quantitative description of the conductance of graphene pn junctions -an important building block for graphene electronics devices. In this paper, recent experiments on graphene junctions are explained by a ballistic transport model, but only if the finite junction transition width, Dw, is accounted for. In particular, the experimentally observed anamolous increase in the resistance asymmetry between nn and np junctions under low source/drain charge density conditions is also quantitatively captured by our model. In light of the requirement for sharp junctions in applications such as electron focusing, we also examine the pn junction conductance in the regime where Dw is small and find that wavefunction mismatch (so-called pseudo-spin) plays a major role in sharp pn junctions.

We report a current-induced, persistent, long-lived, and rewritable electron spin polarization in a 3D topological insulator.