Charles Kane and Andrew Rappe Identify New Insulating Material

Charles Kane and Andrew Rappe were part of a team that identified a new class of insulating material that has a conducting surface. The surface is stabilized by a pattern of symmetry similar to the pattern on an ordinary piece of wallpaper. Using a combination of analytical and computational techniques, the team predicted that Sr₂Pb₃ is a topological Dirac insulator and computed the special features of its surface states. The work, published in Science, is the latest in a string of interdisciplinary successes by this integrated Topological Science Seed project team of the MRSEC. The LRSM has supported the seed, with the goals of establishing new principles in the burgeoning field of topological physics, and translating these principles to real materials.