Essential Design Criteria for Topological Electronics and Spintronics

The societal demand for electronic devices that offer increased performance accompanied by commensurate decreases in constituent system form factors. Such requirements necessitate the exploration of new materials and new phenomena within which new paradigmatically different information processing technologies may be constructed. Topological materials (TMs) represent an emergent and expanding class of materials that possess a plethora of unique electrical, magnetic and optical properties that have potential to alter the landscape of device technologies. Of the potential applications, one of the most promising is the use of 3D dichalcogenide TMs, such as Bi2Se3, for electronics and spintronics. Inherent within such a proposal is the requirement that magnetism must be introduced from a host magnet into a victim TM. While conceptionally simple, the resulting experimental and theoretical work on proximity-induced magnetization in TMs paints a complex picture of competing interaction and energy scales. In this paper, we explore the required properties and constraints placed on both the topological and magnetic materials in order to realize the most effective transfer of magnetization into the underlying TM with the goal of maximizing the magnitude of the magnetism in the TM so as to enable the possibility of designer magnetic/TMs capable of stable room-temperature operation.