• DOI:10.1103/PHYSREVMATERIALS.5.044201
• Corpus ID: 220646807

Gate-tunable imbalanced Kane-Mele model in encapsulated bilayer jacutingaite

@article{Rademaker2020GatetunableIK,
  title={Gate-tunable imbalanced Kane-Mele model in encapsulated bilayer jacutingaite},
  author={Louk Rademaker and Marco Gibertini},
  journal={arXiv: Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics},
  year={2020}
}

• L. Rademaker, M. Gibertini
• Published 20 July 2020
• Physics
• arXiv: Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

We study free, capped and encapsulated bilayer jacutingaite Pt\2HgSe\3 from first principles. While the free standing bilayer is a large gap trivial insulator, we find that the encapsulated structure has a small trivial gap due to the competition between sublattice symmetry breaking and sublattice-dependent next-nearest-neighbor hopping. Upon the application of a small perpendicular electric field, the encapsulated bilayer undergoes a topological transition towards a quantum spin Hall insulator. We find that this topological transition can be qualitatively understood by modeling the two layers as uncoupled and described by an imbalanced Kane-Mele model that takes into account the sublattice imbalance and the corresponding inversion-symmetry breaking in each layer. Within this picture, bilayer jacutingaite undergoes a transition from a 0+0 state, where each layer is trivial, to a 0+1 state, where an unusual topological state relying on Rashba-like spin orbit coupling emerges in only one of the layers.