Engineering Topological Surface States and Giant Rashba Spin Splitting in BiTeI/Bi₂Te₃ Heterostructures

The search for strongly inversion asymmetric topological insulators is an active research field because these materials possess distinct properties compared with the inversion symmetric ones. In particular, it is desirable to realize a large Rashba spin-splitting (RSS) in such materials, which combined with the topological surface states (TSS) could lead to useful spintronics applications. In this report, based on first principles calculations, we predict that the heterostructure of BiTeI/Bi₂Te₃ is a strong topological insulator with a giant RSS. The coexistence of TSS and RSS in the current system is native and stable. More importantly, we find that both the ℤ₂ invariants and the Rashba energy can be controlled by engineering the layer geometries of the heterostructure, and the Rashba energy can be made even larger than that of bulk BiTeI. Our work opens a new route for designing topological spintronics devices based on inversion asymmetric heterostructures.