Journal
NANO LETTERS
Volume 13, Issue 3, Pages 1179-1184Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/nl304583m
Keywords
Natural topological insulator; nanosheet; weak antilocalization; universal conductance fluctuations; angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy
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Funding
- Emmy Noether program
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The earth's crust and outer space are rich sources of technologically relevant materials which have found application in a wide range of fields. Well-established examples are diamond, one of the hardest known materials, or graphite as a suitable precursor of graphene. The ongoing drive to discover novel materials useful for (opto)electronic applications has recently drawn strong attention to topological insulators. Here, we report that Kawazulite, a mineral with the approximate composition Bi-2(Te,Se)(2)(Se,S), represents a naturally occurring topological insulator whose electronic properties compete well with those of its synthetic counterparts. Kawazulite flakes with a thickness of a few tens of nanometers were prepared by mechanical exfoliation. They exhibit a low intrinsic bulk doping level and correspondingly a sizable mobility of surface state carriers of more than 1000 cm(2)/(V s) at low temperature. Based on these findings, further minerals which due to their minimized defect densities display even better electronic characteristics may be identified in the future.
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