Conventional commercial inductors (coils) have a minimum size of ~0.1 mm. The proposed topological insulator inductor theoretically is expected to work as an inductor about 10,000 times smaller than the conventional one, owing to the adoption of a thin-film heterostructure of a magnetic insulator and a topological insulator.

An inductor is a component used to control high-frequency signals in electronic circuits by inducing an electric voltage in response to current modulation. Commercially used inductors are composed of coils. In our study, we theoretically proposed a new type of inductor composed of a heterostructure comprising a topological insulator and magnetic insulator thin films (Fig. 1). The inductance arises from the magnetoelectric response characteristic to the interface of the topological insulator. The new inductor can be fabricated as thin 10 nm, and the power loss caused by internal resistivity is extremely low. Therefore, it may potentially lead to further integration of electronic circuits.

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers (JP19H05622, JP20H01830, JP21H04643, and JP22K03538) and MEXT Leading Initiative for Excellent Young Researchers.

Araki, Y. et al., Emergence of Inductance and Capacitance from Topological Electromagnetism, Journal of the Physical Society of Japan, vol.92, no.7, 2023, 074705, 9p.

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