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Topological insulators are a new class of materials with an insulating bulk and topologically protected metallic surface states. Although it is widely assumed that these surface states display a Dirac-type dispersion that is symmetric above and below the Dirac point, this exact equivalence across the Fermi level has yet to be established experimentally. Here, we present a detailed transport study of the 3D topological insulator-strained HgTe that strongly challenges this prevailing viewpoint. First, we establish the existence of exclusively surface-dominated transport via the observation of an ambipolar surface quantum Hall effect and quantum oscillations in the Seebeck and Nernst effect. Second, we show that, whereas the thermopower is diffusion driven for surface electrons, both diffusion and phonon drag contributions are essential for the hole surface carriers. This distinct behavior in the thermoelectric response is explained by a strong deviation from the linear dispersion relation for the surface states, with a much flatter dispersion for holes compared with electrons. These findings show that the metallic surface states in topological insulators can exhibit both strong electron–hole asymmetry and a strong deviation from a linear dispersion but remain topologically protected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show evidence of the backscattering of quantum Hall edge channels in a narrow graphene Hall bar, induced by the gating effect of the conducting tip of a scanning gate microscope, which we can position with nanometer precision. We show full control over the edge channels and are able, because of the spatial variation of the tip potential, to separate copropagating edge channels in the Hall bar, creating junctions between regions of different charge carrier density, that have not been observed in devices based on top or split gates. The solution of the corresponding quantum scattering problem is presented to substantiate these results, and possible follow-up experiments are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]