The physical vapor deposition (PVD) technique does not suffer from the disadvantages of the exfoliation method and, at the same time, it is much simpler and cheaper than the fully controlled growth by molecular-beam epitaxy. The PVD method enables a reproducible synthesis of single crystals of various layered quasi-two-dimensional materials including topological insulators (i.e., Bi 2 Se 3, Bi 2 Te 3). The resulted single crystals have a well-defined crystallographic orientation; their composition, thickness, size, and the surface density on the desired substrate can be controlled. The thickness control is particularly important for 3D TIs in which the trivial (bulky) electronic channels usually dominate the transport properties and mask the response of the topological (surface) modes. By reducing the thickness, one lowers the contribution of trivial bulk channels into the total conduction, thus forcing the topological modes to carry the electric current.