Quantum oscillations of robust topological surface states up to 50 K in thick bulk-insulating topological insulator

As personal electronic devices increasingly rely on cloud computing for energy-intensive calculations, the power consumption associated with the information revolution is rapidly becoming an important environmental issue. Several approaches have been proposed to construct electronic devices with low-energy consumption. Among these, the low-dissipation surface states of topological insulators (TIs) are widely employed. To develop TI-based devices, a key factor is the maximum temperature at which the Dirac surface states dominate the transport behavior. Here, we employ Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations (SdH) as a means to study the surface state survival temperature in a high-quality vanadium doped Bi_1.08Sn_0.02Sb_0.9Te₂S single crystal system. The temperature and angle dependence of the SdH show that: (1) crystals with different vanadium (V) doping levels are insulating in the 3–300 K region; (2) the SdH oscillations show two-dimensional behavior, indicating that the oscillations arise from the pure surface states; and (3) at 50 K, the V_0.04 single crystals (V_x:Bi_1.08-xSn_0.02Sb_0.9Te₂S, where x = 0.04) still show clear sign of SdH oscillations, which demonstrate that the surface dominant transport behavior can survive above 50 K. The robust surface states in our V doped single crystal systems provide an ideal platform to study the Dirac fermions and their interaction with other materials above 50 K.