Crystal growth and anomalous transport properties of CuxBi2Se3

Topological insulators (TIs) have received considerable attention due to their potential to offer new platforms for the realization of novel states of quantum maters. TIs are characterized by their fully insulating gap in the bulk but necessarily gapless edge or surface states protected by time-reversal symmetry. Recently, the three-dimensional (3D) TIs were theoretically predicted and discovered by experiments, including binary Bi1-xSbx alloys, Bi2Se3, Bi2Te3, Sb2Se3 and Sb2Te3 compounds [1]. It was found that the 3D Bi2Se3 topological insulator has the simplest Dirac cone surface spectrum and the largest band gap, of 0.3 eV, which indicates a true topological insulating behavior at room temperature and greatly increases potential applications in the future.