Emergent inductance and capacitance in elemental tellurium

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Abstract
The miniaturisation of electronic building blocks is of uttermost importance. Efficient nanoscopic inductors and capacitors could pave the way to better energy economics and therewith more powerful processors. Topological materials which exhibit emergent electromagnetism are promising candidates for such future technologies. Due to its helical crystal structure and strong spin-orbit interaction, tellurium exhibits an experimentally verified internal inductance. By formulating the constitutive equations which describe electromagnetism in tellurium, we show how capacitive and inductive properties naturally emerge in the material. We demonstrate on the basis of AC-impedance measurements that elemental tellurium exhibits an unusually high virtual capacitance and inductance, far exceeding previously studied materials. The highest capacitance we detect in our samples is 130 mF and in one of our samples we measure an extremely impressive virtual inductance of 1.5 H. For low current densities a single piece of tellurium mimics the reactance of an RLC-circuit.

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