Quantum anomalous Hall effect in magnetic insulator heterostructure.

On the basis of ab initio calculations, we predict that a monolayer of Cr-doped (Bi,Sb)2Te3 and GdI2 heterostructure is a quantum anomalous Hall insulator with a nontrivial band gap up to 38 meV. The principle behind our prediction is that the band inversion between two topologically trivial ferromagnetic insulators can result in a nonzero Chern number, which offers a better way to realize the quantum anomalous Hall state without random magnetic doping. In addition, a simple effective model is presented to describe the basic mechanism of spin polarized band inversion in this system. Moreover, we predict that 3D quantum anomalous Hall insulator could be realized in (Bi2/3Cr1/3)2Te3 /GdI2 superlattice.