Surface state dominated transport in topological insulator Bi2Te3 nanowires

We report on low temperature magnetoresistance measurements on single-crystalline Bi2Te3 nanowires synthesized via catalytic growth and post-annealing in a Te-rich atmosphere. The observation of Aharonov-Bohm oscillations indicates the presence of topological surface states. Analyses of Subnikov-de Haas oscillations in perpendicular magnetoresistance yield extremely low two-dimensional carrier concentrations and effective electron masses, and very high carrier mobilities. All our findings are in excellent agreement with theoretical predictions of massless Dirac fermions at the surfaces of topological insulators. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.