Ferromagnetic topological insulator (IMAGE)
Caption
A team of researchers from the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat based at the universities JMU Würzburg and TU Dresden has engineered the topological insulator manganese bismuth telluride (MnBi6Te10) to make it ferromagnetic. The amazing thing about this quantum material is that its ferromagnetic properties only occur when antisite disorder is introduced into its atomic structure. To achieve this, some manganese atoms (green) need to be relocated from their original position (second green atomic layer from the top). Only when manganese atoms are present in all the layers containing bismuth atoms (gray) does the magnetic interaction between them become sufficiently contagious to point them in the same direction and create ferromagnetism.
Credit
Jörg Bandmann / ct.qmat
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