Electron–phonon interactions at the topological edge states in single bilayer Bi(111)

An intriguing feature of two-dimensional topological insulators is the topologically protected electronic edge state, which allows one-way carrier transport without backscattering. Although this feature has strong potential applications in lossless electronics, the ideal behavior of the edge states may be fragile due to electron-phonon (e-ph) interactions at room temperatures. Using density functional perturbation theory calculations for single bilayer Bi(111) as a prototypical 2D topological insulator, we show that e-ph scattering can be a significant source of backscattering at the topological edge states. We also show that e-ph interactions strongly correlate to the dispersions of the electronic edge states. In particular, the e-ph interactions increase significantly with temperature and are much stronger at the nonlinearly dispersed edge states of native edges compared to the linearly dispersed edge states of passivated edges, causing a significant energy dissipation in the temperature range of 200-400 K. Overall, we argue that the e-ph interactions can be a crucial factor at finite temperatures in controlling the electronic transport at the topologically protected edge states.