Accessing the Intrinsic Spin Transport in a Topological Insulator by Controlling the Crossover of Bulk-to-Surface Conductance

Abstract

We report a method to control contributions of bulk and surface states in the topological insulator Bi2Te2Se that allows accessing the spin-polarized transport endowed by topological surface states. An intrinsic surface dominant transport is established when cooling the sample to low temperature or reducing the conduction channel length, both achieved in situ in the transport measurements with a four-probe scanning tunneling microscope without the need of further tailoring the sample. The topological surface states show characteristic transport behaviors with mobility about an order of magnitude higher than reported before, and a spin polarization approaching the theoretically predicted value. Our result demonstrates accessibility to the intrinsic high mobility spin transport of topological surface states, which paves a way to realizing topological spintronic devices.