We study the spin-$1/2$ Kitaev honeycomb gapless spin liquid in the presence of Stone-Wales-type local lattice defects with odd-sided plaquettes. While the clean Kitaev model has no finite-temperature phase transitions, we find that introducing a finite defect density $n_d\approx {10}^{-4}–{10}^{-2}$ produces a true phase transition with a sizeable $T_c\approx 2n_d$ in units of the Kitaev exchange. The resulting non-Abelian chiral quantum spin liquid exhibits scalar spin chirality and electron orbital magnetization which peak near lattice defects. This disorder-driven instability relies on an emergent long range ferromagnetic interaction $r^{-\gamma }$ ($\gamma \approx 2.7$) between defect chiralities, mediated by the nearly gapless fermions, with implications for topology generation in Dirac cones with fluctuating mass terms.

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• Defects
• Quantum spin liquid
• Chiral magnets
• Topological materials