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arXiv · 2301.02686

Structural spillage: an efficient method to identify non-crystalline topological materials

Daniel Muñoz-Segovia·Paul Corbae·Dániel Varjas·Frances Hellman·Sinéad M. Griffin·Adolfo G. Grushin
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Abstract

While topological materials are not restricted to crystals, there is no efficient method to diagnose topology in non-crystalline solids such as amorphous materials. Here we introduce the structural spillage, a new indicator that predicts the unknown topological phase of a non-crystalline solid, which is compatible with first-principles calculations. We illustrate its potential with tight-binding and first-principles calculations of amorphous bismuth, predicting a bilayer to be a new topologically nontrivial material. Our work opens up the efficient prediction of non-crystalline solids via first-principles and high-throughput searches.

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Daniel Muñoz-Segovia, Paul Corbae, Dániel Varjas, Frances Hellman, Sinéad M. Griffin, Adolfo G. Grushin. 2023-01-06. Structural spillage: an efficient method to identify non-crystalline topological materials. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevresearch.5.l042011

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