Materials that possess nontrivial topology and magnetism is known to exhibit exotic quantum phenomena such as the quantum anomalous Hall effect. Here, we fabricate a novel magnetic topological heterostructure Mn4Bi2Te7/Bi2Te3 where multiple magnetic layers are inserted into the topmost quintuple layer of the original topological insulator Bi2Te3. A massive Dirac cone (DC) with a gap of 40–75 meV at 16 K is observed. By tracing the temperature evolution, this gap is shown to gradually decrease with increasing temperature and a blunt transition from a massive to a massless DC occurs around 200–250 K. Structural analysis shows that the samples also contain MnBi2Te4/Bi2Te3. Magnetic measurements show that there are two distinct Mn components in the system that corresponds to the two heterostructures; MnBi2Te4/Bi2Te3 is paramagnetic at 6 K while Mn4Bi2Te7/Bi2Te3 is ferromagnetic with a negative hysteresis (critical temperature  ~20 K). This novel heterostructure is potentially important for future device applications.

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Introducing magnetic order into a topological insulator (TI) system has attracted much attention with an expectation of realizing exotic phenomena such as the quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE) and axion insulator states. The magnetic proximity effect (MPE) is one of the promising schemes to induce the magnetic order on the surface of a TI without introducing disorder accompanied by doping magnetic impurities in the TI. In this study, we investigate the MPE at the interface of a heterostructure consisting of the topological crystalline insulator (TCI) SnTe and Fe by employing polarized neutron reflectometry. The ferromagnetic order penetrates ∼2.2 nm deep into the SnTe layer from the interface with Fe, which persists up to room temperature. This is induced by the MPE on the surface of the TCI preserving the coherent topological states without introducing the disorder by doping magnetic impurities. This would open up a way for realizing next-generation spintronics and quantum computational devices.

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