Heating up the quantum spin Hall effect

Abstract

Topological Matter Taking practical advantage of the topologically protected conducting edge states of topological insulators (TIs) has proven difficult. Semiconductor systems that have been identified as two-dimensional TIs must be cooled down to near liquid helium temperatures to bring out their topological character. Wu et al. fabricated a heterostructure consisting of a monolayer of WTe2 placed between two layers of hexagonal boron nitride and found that its topological properties persisted up to a relatively high temperature of 100 K. Engineering this so-called quantum spin Hall effect in a van der Waals heterostructure makes it possible to apply many established experimental tools and functionalities. Science , this issue p. [76][1] [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aan6003