a topological insulator is grown on an ic wafer in a vacuum chamber as a thin film interconnect between two circuits in the ic communicating with each other . as the ti is being grown , magnetic doping of the various ti sub - layers is varied to create different edge states in the stack of sub - layers . the sub - edges conduct in parallel with virtually zero power dissipation . conventional metal electrodes are formed on the ic wafer that electrically contact the four corners of the ti layer to electrically connect a first circuit to a second circuit via the ti interconnect . the ti interconnect thus forms two independent conducting paths between the two circuits , with each path being formed of a plurality of sub - edges . this allows bi - direction communications without collisions . since each electrode contacts many sub - edges in parallel , the overall contact resistance is extremely low .