Resonant tunneling in a topological insulator superlattice

The transport properties of the Dirac fermions through the topological insulator superlattice (TISL) have been investigated by means of the transfer matrix method. It was found that the transmission probability of TISL exhibits the strong resonant peaks due to the modulation of SL. It was remarkable that the Dirac fermions perform the perfect transmission at the normal incidence regardless of TISL's parameters and the Fermi energy, even though the linear dispersion is distorted at the high energy. Intriguingly, the perfect transmission occurs in the case of the oblique incidence if the Fermi energy is large enough. The warping effect induces some mini-peaks in the conductance curves, while the conductance oscillates with the delta-function potential strength due to the unique chiral surface states of TI. These findings are useful for developing TISL-based devices. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.