I will be researching topological insulators, which are a newly discovered class of material with unique properties. Due to their structures, these materials are insulators on the inside, but conductors on the outside. One crucial property of topological insulators is that they can transport electrical currents without energy loss, making them a more efficient option in the field of electronics. Research on the discovery, properties, and uses of these materials could lead to more energy-efficient technologies in the future and even the development of more powerful quantum computers.

I know that topological insulators are mainly studied in condensed matter physics, which is an area of physics that I am most interested in. I am most knowledgeable in the properties of these materials, such as their conductivity and particle structure, as well as recent discoveries of them. However, I still have a lot to learn when it comes to the quantum Hall effect and electron spin, which are both topics that deal with the behavior of electrons.

For my research, I would like to focus on sources that explain the nature and practical applications of topological insulators. Some key areas I will focus on are the conductivity properties that make topological insulators special, and the quantum Hall effect.

The sources I plan to use include:

Huang, Y., Skinner, B., & Shklovskii, B. I. (2022). Conductivity of Two-Dimensional Small Gap Semiconductors and Topological Insulators in Strong Coulomb Disorder. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics, 135(4), 409–425. https://doi.org/10.1134/s1063776122100065

Nguyen, V. C., Hoi, B. D., & Yarmohammadi, M. (2020). Electrical conductivity of statically perturbed topological crystalline insulators. Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, 53(42), 425301. https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6463/ab9d9c

‌ Xu, Y., Miotkowski, I., Liu, C., Tian, J., Nam, H., Alidoust, N., Hu, J., Shih, C.-K., Hasan, M. Z., & Chen, Y. P. (2014). Observation of topological surface state quantum Hall effect in an intrinsic three-dimensional topological insulator. Nature Physics, 10(12), 956–963. https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3140

Zhao, W., Xing, K., Chen, L., Vu, T., Akhgar, G., He, Y., Bake, A., Wang, X., Karel, J. (2024). Quantum interference effects in a 3D topological insulator with high-temperature bulk-insulating behavior. Applied Physics Review, 11(1), 011419. https://doi-org.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/10.1063/5.0168129