Topological defects and topological materials

Journal Article · Wed Jul 13 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Integrated Ferroelectrics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1080/10584587.2016.1189310· OSTI ID:1498032

Saxena, Avadh ^[1]

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1. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

We report that defects in materials that interpolate between two orientation states such as domain walls and those which relate to some kind of material discontinuity, e.g. dislocations and disclinations, comprise topological defects. Noncoplanar vector arrangements, e.g. vortices, skyrmions, and possibly monopole-like excitations, also belong to this family of defects. Presence of such defects affects many of the macroscopic properties of materials, for example electronic transport and strength. Materials in which topological aspects, e.g. edge or surface states, affect the electronic, transport and other properties can be described as topological materials. Topological insulators, topological superconductors and certain Dirac materials, e.g. graphene and Weyl semimetals, belong to this class of materials. Lastly, these materials possess unusual functionalities potentially useful in a variety of information processing and quantum computation based applications.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD); USDOE
• Grant/Contract Number: 89233218CNA000001
• OSTI ID: 1498032
• Report Number(s): LA-UR--15-29211
• Journal Information: Integrated Ferroelectrics, Journal Name: Integrated Ferroelectrics Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 174; ISSN 1058-4587
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
Dirac materials
Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction
Vortices
Weyl semimetals
skyrmions
topological insulators