Pressure-Induced Reversible Phase Transition in Nanostructured Bi2Te3 with a Room-Temperature
Ferromagnetism
Guanjun Xiao, Bo Zou
State Key Laboratory of Superhard Materials, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China
Email:zoubo@jlu.edu.cn; xguanjun@jlu.edu.cn
High-pressure researches on nanostructured materials have been of considerable interest owing to the
quantum confinement effect in the nanocrystals. Bi2Te3 has long been known as one of the best available
thermoelectric materials with higher figure of merit (ZT) near room temperature. The latest discovery of threedimensional topological insulators with a single Dirac cone on the surface in Bi 2Te3 in particular made it
much more fascinating. Very recent research by our group demonstrated that an unexpected room-temperature
ferromagenetism in nanostructured Bi2Te3 was identified as a result of intrinsic point defect with respect to the
antisite Te site. The work provided new insights into the origin of magnetism and offered a promising
opportunity to realize the quantum anomalous Hall effect. Despite the special interest in it, response of Bi2Te3
to high pressure has been yet rarely explored. Recently, Bi-Te subtutional nonmetallic alloy was succefully
achieved at pressure above 25 GPa, making high pressure as a highly attractive route to synthesize novel
alloys. Otherwise, best endeavoring to satisfy energy conservation remains a major concern to date, hence
encouraging us to seek how to lower the applied pressure for the preparation of nonmetallic alloys. In this
regard, we report a pressure-induced reversible structural phase transition in nanostructured Bi 2Te3
hierarchical architectures (HAs) that prepared via a facile solution-phase method. Therein, distinct phases I–
IV, associated with crystal structures of rhombohedral (I), monoclinic (II, III) and cubic (IV), were
experimentally identified with increasing pressure up to 20.17 gigapascals (GPa) in a diamond anvil cell. It
was worthwhile to notice that nanostructured Bi2Te3 HAs ultimately evolved into a fascinating Bi-Te
substitutional nonmetallic alloy at pressure even as low as 15.03 GPa, approximate 10 GPa lower than that of
conventional bulk counterpart. Large volume collapse in the case was proposed to be responsible for the
reduction of transition pressure that is contrary to the general model for most nanomaterials. Our findings may
pave a promising pathway for developing future multifunctional alloys that are composed of nonmetallic
elements.
Figure 1. Representative in situ ADXRD patterns at selected pressures of the nanostructured Bi2Te3 HAs with
the presence of silicon oil as PTM during the experiments performed at SSRF, China.
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