skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Observation of unusual topological surface states in half-Heusler compounds LnPtBi (Ln=Lu, Y)

Abstract

Topological quantum materials represent a new class of matter with both exotic physical phenomena and novel application potentials. Many Heusler compounds, which exhibit rich emergent properties such as unusual magnetism, superconductivity and heavy fermion behaviour, have been predicted to host non-trivial topological electronic structures. The coexistence of topological order and other unusual properties makes Heusler materials ideal platform to search for new topological quantum phases (such as quantum anomalous Hall insulator and topological superconductor). By carrying out angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and ab initio calculations on rare-earth half-Heusler compounds LnPtBi (Ln=Lu, Y), we directly observe the unusual topological surface states on these materials, establishing them as first members with non-trivial topological electronic structure in this class of materials. Moreover, as LnPtBi compounds are non-centrosymmetric superconductors, our discovery further highlights them as promising candidates of topological superconductors.

Authors:
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [3];  [1];  [4]; ORCiD logo [5];  [5];  [5];  [6];  [3];  [7]
  1. Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shanghai (China). Shanghai Inst. of Ceramics, Key Lab. for Energy-Conversion Materials
  2. Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China)
  3. Max Planck Society, Dresden (Germany). Max Planck Inst. for the Physics of Complex Systems
  4. Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China)
  5. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Advanced Light Source (ALS)
  6. Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shanghai (China). Shanghai Inst. of Ceramics, Key Lab. for Energy-Conversion Materials; Max Planck Society, Dresden (Germany). Max Planck Inst. for the Physics of Complex Systems
  7. Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shanghai (China). Shanghai Inst. of Ceramics, Key Lab. for Energy-Conversion Materials; Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
OSTI Identifier:
1377502
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC02-05CH11231
Resource Type:
Journal Article: Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Nature Communications
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 7; Journal ID: ISSN 2041-1723
Publisher:
Nature Publishing Group
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE; electronic properties and materials; topological insulators

Citation Formats

Liu, Z. K., Yang, L. X., Wu, S. -C., Shekhar, C., Jiang, J., Yang, H. F., Zhang, Y., Mo, S. -K., Hussain, Z., Yan, B., Felser, C., and Chen, Y. L. Observation of unusual topological surface states in half-Heusler compounds LnPtBi (Ln=Lu, Y). United States: N. p., 2016. Web. doi:10.1038/ncomms12924.
Liu, Z. K., Yang, L. X., Wu, S. -C., Shekhar, C., Jiang, J., Yang, H. F., Zhang, Y., Mo, S. -K., Hussain, Z., Yan, B., Felser, C., & Chen, Y. L. Observation of unusual topological surface states in half-Heusler compounds LnPtBi (Ln=Lu, Y). United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12924
Liu, Z. K., Yang, L. X., Wu, S. -C., Shekhar, C., Jiang, J., Yang, H. F., Zhang, Y., Mo, S. -K., Hussain, Z., Yan, B., Felser, C., and Chen, Y. L. 2016. "Observation of unusual topological surface states in half-Heusler compounds LnPtBi (Ln=Lu, Y)". United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12924. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1377502.
@article{osti_1377502,
title = {Observation of unusual topological surface states in half-Heusler compounds LnPtBi (Ln=Lu, Y)},
author = {Liu, Z. K. and Yang, L. X. and Wu, S. -C. and Shekhar, C. and Jiang, J. and Yang, H. F. and Zhang, Y. and Mo, S. -K. and Hussain, Z. and Yan, B. and Felser, C. and Chen, Y. L.},
abstractNote = {Topological quantum materials represent a new class of matter with both exotic physical phenomena and novel application potentials. Many Heusler compounds, which exhibit rich emergent properties such as unusual magnetism, superconductivity and heavy fermion behaviour, have been predicted to host non-trivial topological electronic structures. The coexistence of topological order and other unusual properties makes Heusler materials ideal platform to search for new topological quantum phases (such as quantum anomalous Hall insulator and topological superconductor). By carrying out angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and ab initio calculations on rare-earth half-Heusler compounds LnPtBi (Ln=Lu, Y), we directly observe the unusual topological surface states on these materials, establishing them as first members with non-trivial topological electronic structure in this class of materials. Moreover, as LnPtBi compounds are non-centrosymmetric superconductors, our discovery further highlights them as promising candidates of topological superconductors.},
doi = {10.1038/ncomms12924},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1377502}, journal = {Nature Communications},
issn = {2041-1723},
number = ,
volume = 7,
place = {United States},
year = {Tue Sep 27 00:00:00 EDT 2016},
month = {Tue Sep 27 00:00:00 EDT 2016}
}

Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record

Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 102 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

Save / Share:

Works referenced in this record:

Weak Antilocalization Effect and Noncentrosymmetric Superconductivity in a Topologically Nontrivial Semimetal LuPdBi
journal, July 2014


Massive electron state in YbBiPt
journal, December 1991


Quick iterative scheme for the calculation of transfer matrices: application to Mo (100)
journal, May 1984


Generalized Gradient Approximation Made Simple
journal, October 1996


Superconductivity and magnetic order in the noncentrosymmetric half-Heusler compound ErPdBi
journal, October 2013


Topological insulators and superconductors
journal, October 2011


Magnetism and heavy fermion‐like behavior in the RBiPt series
journal, November 1991


Anomalous magnetic properties of Heusler superconductor YbPd2Sn
journal, May 2000


High electron mobility and large magnetoresistance in the half-Heusler semimetal LuPtBi
journal, December 2015


Dynamical axion field in topological magnetic insulators
journal, March 2010


wannier90: A tool for obtaining maximally-localised Wannier functions
journal, May 2008


Odd-Parity Topological Superconductors: Theory and Application to Cu x Bi 2 Se 3
journal, August 2010


Colloquium: Topological insulators
journal, November 2010


Discovery of a Three-Dimensional Topological Dirac Semimetal, Na3Bi
journal, January 2014


Thermodynamic and transport properties of the non-centrosymmetric superconductor LaBiPt
journal, April 2008


Circular Dichroism in Photoemission from Nonmagnetic, Low- Z Solids: A Conspicuous Effect of the Photon Spin
journal, February 1992


Tunable multifunctional topological insulators in ternary Heusler compounds
journal, May 2010


Topological R PdBi half-Heusler semimetals: A new family of noncentrosymmetric magnetic superconductors
journal, June 2015


First-principles calculation of topological invariants within the FP-LAPW formalism
journal, September 2012


Metallic surface electronic state in half-Heusler compounds R PtBi ( R = Lu, Dy, Gd)
journal, May 2011


Surface and edge states in topological semimetals
journal, February 2011


Discovery of a Weyl fermion semimetal and topological Fermi arcs
journal, July 2015


Topological Insulator Materials
journal, October 2013


Half-Heusler topological insulators
journal, October 2014


Topological crystalline insulator states in Pb1−xSnxSe
journal, September 2012


Abrupt Rotation of the Rashba Spin to the Direction Perpendicular to the Surface
journal, March 2009


Half-Heusler Compounds as a New Class of Three-Dimensional Topological Insulators
journal, August 2010


Ab initiomolecular dynamics for liquid metals
journal, January 1993


Topological crystalline insulators in the SnTe material class
journal, January 2012


Inducing a Magnetic Monopole with Topological Surface States
journal, February 2009


Superconductivity in the noncentrosymmetric half-Heusler compound LuPtBi: A candidate for topological superconductivity
journal, May 2013


Ab initio study of topological surface states of strained HgTe
journal, September 2014


Weyl semimetal phase in the non-centrosymmetric compound TaAs
journal, August 2015


Symmetry-protected ideal Weyl semimetal in HgTe-class materials
journal, April 2016


Superconductivity in the topological semimetal YPtBi
journal, December 2011


Memcomputing NP -complete problems in polynomial time using polynomial resources and collective states
journal, July 2015


A stable three-dimensional topological Dirac semimetal Cd3As2
journal, May 2014


The chiral anomaly and thermopower of Weyl fermions in the half-Heusler GdPtBi
journal, June 2016


Topological materials
journal, August 2012


Quantum Hall Effect from the Topological Surface States of Strained Bulk HgTe
journal, March 2011


Topological Materials: New Quantum Phases of Matter
journal, March 2020


Surface and Edge States in Topological Semi-metals
text, January 2010


Superconductivity in the topological semimetal YPtBi
text, January 2011


Topological crystalline insulator states in Pb(1-x)Sn(x)Se
text, January 2012


Ab initio study of topological surface states of strained HgTe
text, January 2014


Discovery of a Weyl Fermion Semimetal and Topological Fermi Arcs
text, January 2015


Topological crystalline insulators in the SnTe material class
journal, January 2012


A stable three-dimensional topological Dirac semimetal Cd3As2
journal, May 2014


Theory of unconventional spin states in surfaces with non-Rashba spin-orbit interaction
journal, June 2015


Inducing a Magnetic Monopole with Topological Surface States
journal, February 2009


Superconductivity in the topological semimetal YPtBi
text, January 2011


Works referencing / citing this record:

Multiple Dirac cones at the surface of the topological metal LaBi
journal, January 2017


Pressure-induced superconductivity in MoP
journal, May 2018


Anomalous quantum oscillations and evidence for a non-trivial Berry phase in SmSb
journal, May 2019


Heusler, Weyl and Berry
journal, July 2018


Electronic structure of the PrNiBi half-Heusler system based on the σGGA + U method
journal, December 2019


Heusler interfaces—Opportunities beyond spintronics?
journal, August 2019


Anomalous Hall effect in Weyl semimetal half-Heusler compounds RPtBi (R = Gd and Nd)
journal, August 2018


Multi-functional properties of non-centrosymmetric ternary half-Heuslers, RPdSb (R  =  Er and Ho)
journal, June 2018


Emergence of intrinsic superconductivity below 1.178 K in the topologically non-trivial semimetal state of CaSn 3
journal, April 2019


Crystalline electric field study in a putative topologically trivial rare-earth doped YPdBi compound
journal, August 2019


Topology of triple-point metals
journal, July 2019


Model Hamiltonian and time reversal breaking topological phases of antiferromagnetic half-Heusler materials
journal, June 2017


Magnetotransport properties and giant anomalous Hall angle in the half-Heusler compound TbPtBi
journal, January 2019


Linear-in-Frequency Optical Conductivity in GdPtBi due to Transitions near the Triple Points
journal, October 2018


Topological origin of the type-II Dirac fermions in PtSe 2
journal, December 2017


Beyond triplet: Unconventional superconductivity in a spin-3/2 topological semimetal
journal, April 2018


Peculiar half-metallic state in zigzag nanoribbons of MoS 2 : Spin filtering
journal, September 2016


Multiple Dirac cones at the surface of the topological metal LaBi
text, January 2016


Superconductivity in three-dimensional spin-orbit coupled semimetals
text, January 2017


Bogoliubov Fermi surfaces: General theory, magnetic order, and topology
text, January 2018


Electronic structure of the PrNiBi half-Heusler system based on the σGGA + U method
journal, December 2019


Beyond triplet: Unconventional superconductivity in a spin-3/2 topological semimetal
text, January 2018


Multiple Dirac cones at the surface of the topological metal LaBi
text, January 2016