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arXiv · 2003.05732

Band Engineering of Dirac cones in Iron Chalcogenides

Lars Lauke·Rolf Heid·Michael Merz·Thomas Wolf·Amir-Abbas Haghighirad·Jörg Schmalian
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Abstract

By band engineering the iron chalcogenide Fe(Se,Te) via ab-initio calculations, we search for topological surface states and realizations of Majorana bound states. Proposed topological states are expected to occur for non-stoichiometric compositions on a surface Dirac cone where issues like disorder scattering and charge transfer between relevant electronic states have to be addressed. However, this surface Dirac cone is well above the Fermi-level. Our goal is to theoretically design a substituted crystal in which the surface Dirac cone is shifted towards the Fermi-level by modifying the bulk material without disturbing the surface. Going beyond conventional density functional theory (DFT), we apply the coherent potential approximation (BEB-CPA) in a mixed basis pseudo-potential framework to scan the substitutional phase-space of co-substitutions on the Se-sites. We have identified iodine as a promising candidate for intrinsic doping. Our specific proposal is that FeSe$_{0.325}$I$_{0.175}$Te$_{0.5}$ is a very likely candidate to exhibit a Dirac cone right at the Fermi energy without inducing strong disorder scattering.

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Lars Lauke, Rolf Heid, Michael Merz, Thomas Wolf, Amir-Abbas Haghighirad, Jörg Schmalian. 2020-03-12. Band Engineering of Dirac cones in Iron Chalcogenides. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.102.054209

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