Robustness to disorder is the defining property of any topological state. The ultimate disorder limits to topological protection are still unknown, although a number of theories predict that even in the amorphous state a quantized conductance might yet reemerge. Here we report that in strongly disordered thin films of the topological material Sb₂Te₃ disorder-induced spin correlations dominate transport of charge—they engender a spin memory phenomenon, generated by the nonequilibrium charge currents controlled by localized spins. We directly detect a glassy yet robust disorder-induced magnetic signal in films free of extrinsic magnetic dopants, which becomes null in a lower-disorder crystalline state. This is where large isotropic negative magnetoresistance (MR)—a hallmark of spin memory—crosses over to positive MR, first with only one e²/h quantum conduction channel, in a weakly antilocalized diffusive transport regime with a 2D scaling characteristic of the topological state. A fresh perspective revealed by our findings is that spin memory effect sets a disorder threshold to the protected topological state. It also points to new possibilities of tuning spin-dependent charge transport by disorder engineering of topological materials.

鲁棒性是任何拓扑状态的定义属性。尽管许多理论预测，即使在非晶态下，量化电导也可能会重新出现，但拓扑保护的最终无序限制仍然未知。在这里，我们报告说，在拓扑材料Sb ₂ Te _3的 无序薄膜中，无序诱导的自旋相关性主导着电荷的传输-它们产生了由局部自旋控制的非平衡电荷电流产生的自旋记忆现象。我们直接在不含外在磁性掺杂剂的薄膜中检测到玻璃状但坚固的无序诱发的磁信号，在低序晶体状态下变为零。在这里，大的各向同性负磁阻（MR）成为自旋记忆的标志，首先以一个仅e ² / h量子传导通道的形式，以弱的反局部扩散传输方式与正MR交叉，拓扑具有二维缩放特征州。我们的发现揭示了一个新的观点，即自旋记忆效应为受保护的拓扑状态设置了无序阈值。它还指出了通过拓扑材料的无序工程调整自旋相关电荷传输的新可能性。