Tunable 3D/2D magnetism in the (MnBi2Te4)(Bi2Te3)m topological insulators family

Feasibility of many emergent phenomena that intrinsic magnetic topological insulators (TIs) may host depends crucially on our ability to engineer and efficiently tune their electronic and magnetic structures. Here we report on a large family of intrinsic magnetic TIs in the homologous series of the van der Waals compounds (MnBi2Te4)(Bi2Te3)m with m = 0, ⋯, 6. Magnetic, electronic and, consequently, topological properties of these materials depend strongly on the m value and are thus highly tunable. The antiferromagnetic (AFM) coupling between the neighboring Mn layers strongly weakens on moving from MnBi2Te4 (m = 0) to MnBi4Te7 (m = 1) and MnBi6Te10 (m = 2). Further increase in m leads to change of the overall magnetic behavior to ferromagnetic (FM) one for (m = 3), while the interlayer coupling almost disappears. In this way, the AFM and FM TI states are, respectively, realized in the m = 0, 1, 2 and m = 3 cases. For large m numbers a hitherto-unknown topologically nontrivial phase can be created, in which below the corresponding critical temperature the magnetizations of the non-interacting 2D ferromagnets, formed by the MnBi2Te4 building blocks, are disordered along the third direction. The variety of intrinsic magnetic TI phases in (MnBi2Te4)(Bi2Te3)m allows efficient engineering of functional van der Waals heterostructures for topological quantum computation, as well as antiferromagnetic and 2D spintronics.This work is supported by Saint Petersburg State University project for scientific investigations (ID No. 51126254, https://spin.lab.spbu.ru) and Russian Science Foundation (Grant no. 18-12-00062 in part of the photoemission measurements and 18-12-00169 in part of calculations of topological invariants, investigation of dependence of the electronic spectra on SOC strength, and tight-binding band structure calculations). Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Grant nos. 20-32-70179 and 18-52-06009) and Science Development Foundation under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan (Grant no. EIF-BGM-4-RFTF-1/2017-21/04/1-M-02) are acknowledged. We also acknowledge the support by the Basque Departamento de Educacion, UPV/EHU (Grant no. IT-756-13), Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Grant no. PID2019-103910GB-I00), the Fundamental Research Program of the State Academies of Sciences (line of research III.23.2.9) and Tomsk State University competitiveness improvement program (project no. 8.1.01.2018). I.P.R. acknowledge support from Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation (State Task No. 0721-2020-0033) (tight-binding calculations). The calculations were performed in Donostia International Physics Center and in the Research park of St. Petersburg State University Computing Center (http://cc.spbu.ru).Peer reviewe