Tunability of the Quantum Spin Hall Effect in Bi(110) Films: Effects of Electric Field and Strain Engineering

The quantum spin Hall (QSH) effect is promising for achieving dissipationless transport devices due to their robust gapless edge states inside insulating bulk gap. However, the currently discussed QSH insulators usually suffer from ultrahigh vacuum or low temperature due to the small bulk gap, which limits their practical applications. Searching for large-gap QSH insulators is highly desirable. Here, the tunable QSH state of a Bi(110) films with a black phosphorus (BP) structure, which is robust against structural deformation and electric field, is explored by first-principles calculations. It is found that the two-monolayer BP-Bi(110) film obtains a tunable large bulk gap by strain engineering and its QSH effect shows a favorable robustness within a wide range of combinations of in-plane and out-of-plane strains, although a single in-plane compression or out-of-plane extension may restrict the topological phase due to the self-doping effect. More interestingly, in view of biaxial strain, two competing ph...