Abstract
Spin-orbit coupling is increasingly seen as a rich source of novel phenomena, as shown by the recent excitement around topological insulators and Rashba effects. We here show that the addition of ferroelectric degrees of freedom to a semiconductor featuring topologically nontrivial properties, such as SnTe, merges the intriguing field of spin-orbit-driven physics with nonvolatile functionalities appealing for spintronics. By using a variety of modeling techniques, we show that a strikingly rich sequence of phases can be induced in SnTe, when going from a room-temperature cubic phase to a low-temperature ferroelectric structure, ranging from a topological crystalline insulator to a time-reversal-invariant topological insulator to a “ferroelectric Rashba semiconductor,” exhibiting a huge electrically controllable Rashba effect in the bulk band structure.
- Received 3 February 2014
- Revised 8 May 2014
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.90.161108
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