  The electrical detection of the surface states of topological insulators is
strongly impeded by the interference of bulk conduction, which commonly arises
due to pronounced doping associated with the formation of lattice defects. As
exemplified by the topological insulator Bi2Te2Se, we show that via van der
Waals epitaxial growth on thin hBN substrates the structural quality of such
nanoplatelets can be substantially improved. The surface state carrier mobility
of nanoplatelets on hBN is increased by a factor of about 3 compared to
platelets on conventional Si/SiOx substrates, which enables the observation of
well-developed Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations. We furthermore demonstrate the
possibility to effectively tune the Fermi level position in the films with the
aid of a back gate.
