Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 1, 2026

Advanced Experimental Methods for Low-temperature Magnetotransport Measurement of Novel Materials
Published on: January 21, 2016
Quantized Hall effect and Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations in highly doped Bi2Se3: evidence for layered transport of
Helin Cao1, Jifa Tian, Ireneusz Miotkowski
1Department of Physics, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA.
Abstract:
Bi2Se3 is an important semiconductor thermoelectric material and a prototype topological insulator. Here we report observation of Shubnikov-de Hass oscillations accompanied by quantized Hall resistances (R(xy)) in highly doped n-type Bi2Se3 with bulk carrier concentrations of few 10(19) cm(-3). Measurements under tilted magnetic fields show that the magnetotransport is 2D-like, where only the c-axis component of the magnetic field controls the Landau level formation. The quantized step size in 1/R(xy) is found to scale with the sample thickness, and average ~e(2)/h per quintuple layer. We show that the observed magnetotransport features do not come from the sample surface, but arise from the bulk of the sample acting as many parallel 2D electron systems to give a multilayered quantum Hall effect. In addition to revealing a new electronic property of Bi2Se3, our finding also has important implications for electronic transport studies of topological insulator materials.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
The Hall Effect
Energy Bands in Solids
Band Formation:
When atoms are brought close together, as in a solid, these discrete energy levels begin to split due to the overlap of electron orbitals from adjacent atoms. This split occurs because of the Pauli exclusion principle, which states...
Semiconductors
Metals such as copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), or lead (Pb) have low resistivity and feature conduction bands that are either not fully occupied or overlap with the valence band, making a bandgap non-existent. This allows electrons in the highest energy levels of the valence band to easily transition to the conduction band upon gaining...
Types of Semiconductors
Carrier Transport
Drift Current:
The drift of charge carriers is started by an external electric field (E). Charged particles, such as electrons and holes, experience an acceleration between collisions with lattice atoms. For electrons, this results in a drift velocity (vd) given by:
Debye–Huckel–Onsager Conductance Equation

