Prediction and observation of the first antiferromagnetic topological insulator

Understand

Magnetic topological insulators (MTIs) are narrow gap semiconductor materials that combine non-trivial band topology and magnetic order.

• Unlike their nonmagnetic counterparts, MTIs may have some of the surfaces gapped due to breaking the time-reversal symmetry, which enables a number of exotic phenomena having potential applications in spintronics.
• So far, MTIs have only been created by means of doping nonmagnetic TIs with 3d transition metal elements, however, such an approach leads to strongly inhomogeneous magnetic and electronic properties of these materials, restricting the observation of important effects to very low temperatures.
• Finding intrinsic MTI, i.e.