TY  - JOUR
AU  - Heffels, Dennis
AU  - Burke, Declan
AU  - Connolly, Malcolm R.
AU  - Schüffelgen, Peter
AU  - Grützmacher, Detlev
AU  - Moors, Kristof
TI  - Robust and Fragile Majorana Bound States in Proximitized Topological Insulator Nanoribbons
JO  - Nanomaterials
VL  - 13
IS  - 4
SN  - 2079-4991
CY  - Basel
PB  - MDPI
M1  - FZJ-2023-01210
SP  - 723 -
PY  - 2023
AB  - Topological insulator (TI) nanoribbons with proximity-induced superconductivity are a promising platform for Majorana bound states (MBSs). In this work, we consider a detailed modeling approach for a TI nanoribbon in contact with a superconductor via its top surface, which induces a superconducting gap in its surface-state spectrum. The system displays a rich phase diagram with different numbers of end-localized MBSs as a function of chemical potential and magnetic flux piercing the cross section of the ribbon. These MBSs can be robust or fragile upon consideration of electrostatic disorder. We simulate a tunneling spectroscopy setup to probe the different topological phases of top-proximitized TI nanoribbons. Our simulation results indicate that a top-proximitized TI nanoribbon is ideally suited for realizing fully gapped topological superconductivity, in particular when the Fermi level is pinned near the Dirac point. In this regime, the setup yields a single pair of MBSs, well separated at opposite ends of the proximitized ribbon, which gives rise to a robust quantized zero-bias conductance peak.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - 36839091
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000940576300001
DO  - DOI:10.3390/nano13040723
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/999176
ER  -