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Register a new userOrigin of the energy gap in the narrow-gap semiconductor FeSb2 revealed by high-pressure magnetotransport measurements
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To elucidate an origin of the two energy gaps in the narrow-gap semiconductor FeSb2, we have investigated the effects of hydrostatic pressure on the resistivity, Hall resistance and magnetoresistance at low temperatures. The larger energy gap evaluated from the temperature dependence of resistivity above 100 K is enhanced from 30 to 40 meV with pressure from 0 to 1.8 GPa, as generally observed in conventional semiconductors. In the low-temperature range where a large Seebeck coefficient was observed, we evaluate the smaller energy gap from the magnetotransport tensor using a two-carrier model and find that the smaller gap exhibits a weak pressure dependence in contrast to that of the larger gap. To explain the pressure variations of the energy gaps, we propose a simple model that the smaller gap is a gap from the impurity level to the conduction band and the larger one is a gap between the valence and conduction bands, suggesting that the observed large Seebeck coefficient is not relevant to electron correlation effects.
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We present a study of the magnetoresistance and Hall effect in the narrow-gap semiconductor FeSb2 at low temperatures. Both the electrical and Hall resistivities show unusual magnetic field dependence in the low-temperature range where a large Seebeck coefficient was observed. By applying a two-carrier model, we find that the carrier concentration decreases from 1 down to 10^-4 ppm/unit cell and the mobility increases from 2000 to 28000 cm2/Vs with decreasing temperature from 30 down to 4 K. At lower temperatures, the magnetoresistive behavior drastically changes and a negative magnetoresistance is observed at 3 K. These low-temperature behaviors are reminiscent of the low-temperature magnetotransport observed in doped semiconductors such as As-doped Ge, which is well described by a weak-localization picture. We argue a detailed electronic structure in FeSb2 inferred from our observations.
We report inelastic neutron scattering measurements aimed at investigating the origin of the temperature-induced paramagnetism in the narrow-gap semiconductor FeSb2. We find that inelastic response for energies up to 60 meV and at temperatures 4.2 K, 300 K and 550 K is essentially consistent with the scattering by lattice phonon excitations. We observe no evidence for a well-defined magnetic peak corresponding to the excitation from the non-magnetic S = 0 singlet ground state to a state of magnetic multiplet in the localized spin picture. Our data establish the quantitative limit of S_{eff}^2 < 0.25 on the fluctuating local spin. However, a broad magnetic scattering continuum in the 15 meV to 35 meV energy range is not ruled out by our data. Our findings make description in terms of the localized Fe spins unlikely and suggest that paramagnetic susceptibility of itinerant electrons is at the origin of the temperature-induced magnetism in FeSb2.
A study of the anisotropy in magnetic, transport and magnetotransport properties of FeSb2 has been made on large single crystals grown from Sb flux. Magnetic susceptibility of FeSb2 shows diamagnetic to paramagnetic crossover around 100K. Electrical transport along two axes is semiconducting whereas the third axis exhibits a metal - semiconductor crossover at temperature Tmin which is sensitive to current alignment and ranges between 40 and 80K. In H=70kOe semiconducting transport is restored for T<300K, resulting in large magnetoresistance [rho(70kOe)-rho(0)]/rho(0)=2200% in the crossover temperature range
CrBr$_{3}$ is a layered van der Waals material with magnetic ordering down to the 2D limit. For decades, based on optical measurements, it is believed that the energy gap of CrBr$_{3}$ is in the range of 1.68-2.1 eV. However, controversial results have indicated that the band gap of CrBr$_{3}$ is possibly smaller than that. An unambiguous determination of the energy gap is critical to the correct interpretations of the experimental results of CrBr$_{3}$. Here, we present the scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy (STM/S) results of CrBr$_{3}$ thin and thick flakes exfoliated onto pyropytic graphite (HOPG) surfaces and density functional theory (DFT) calculations to reveal the small energy gap (peak-to-peak energy gap to be 0.57 eV $pm$ 0.04 eV; or the onset signal energy gap to be 0.29 $pm$ 0.05 eV from dI/dV spectra). Atomic resolution topography images show the defect-free crystal structure and the dI/dV spectra exhibit multiple peak features measured at 77 K. The conduction band - valence band peak pairs in the multi-peak dI/dV spectrum agree very well with all reported optical transitions. STM topography images of mono- and bi-layer CrBr$_{3}$ flakes exhibit edge degradation due to short air exposure (~15 min) during sample transfer. The unambiguously determined small energy gap settles the controversy and is the key in better understanding CrBr$_{3}$ and similar materials.
Direct-gap materials hold promises for excitonic insulator. In contrast to indirect-gap materials, here the difficulty to distinguish from a Peierls charge density wave is circumvented. However, direct-gap materials still suffer from the divergence of polarizability when the band gap approaches zero, leading to diminishing exciton binding energy. We propose that one can decouple the exciton binding energy from the band gap in materials where band-edge states have the same parity. First-principles calculations of two-dimensional GaAs and experimentally mechanically exfoliated single-layer TiS 3 lend solid supports to the new principle.
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