No Arabic abstract
Since the discovery of extremely large non-saturating magnetoresistance (MR) in WTe2, much effort has been devoted to understanding the underlying mechanism, which is still under debate. Here, we explicitly identify the dominant physical origin of the large non-saturating MR through in-situ tuning of the magneto-transport properties in thin WTe2 film. With an electrostatic doping approach, we observed a non-monotonic gate dependence of the MR. The MR reaches a maximum (10600%) in thin WTe2 film at certain gate voltage where electron and hole concentrations are balanced, indicating that the charge compensation is the dominant mechanism of the observed large MR. Besides, we show that the temperature dependent magnetoresistance exhibits similar tendency with the carrier mobility when the charge compensation is retained, revealing that distinct scattering mechanisms may be at play for the temperature dependence of magneto-transport properties. Our work would be helpful for understanding mechanism of the large MR in other nonmagnetic materials and offers an avenue for achieving large MR in the non-magnetic materials with electron-hole pockets.
We present a detailed study of magnetoresistance r{ho}xx(H), Hall effect r{ho}xy(H), and electrolyte gating effect in thin (<100 nm) exfoliated crystals of WTe2. We observe quantum oscillations in H of both r{ho}xx(H) and r{ho}xy(H), and identify four oscillation frequencies consistent with previous reports in thick crystals. r{ho}xy(H) is linear in H at low H consistent with near-perfect electron-hole compensation, however becomes nonlinear and changes sign with increasing H, implying a breakdown of compensation. A field-dependent ratio of carrier concentrations p/n can consistently explain r{ho}xx(H) and r{ho}xy(H) within a two-fluid model. We also employ an electrolytic gate to highly electron-dope WTe2 with Li. The non-saturating r{ho}xx(H) persists to H = 14 T with magnetoresistance ratio exceeding 2 x 104 %, even with significant deviation from perfect electron-hole compensation (p/n = 0.84), where the two-fluid model predicts a saturating r{ho}xx(H). Our results suggest electron-hole compensation is not the mechanism for extremely large magnetoresistance in WTe2, other alternative explanations need to be considered.
The observation of the electrically tunable and highly confined plasmons in graphene has stimulated the exploration of interesting properties of plasmons in other two dimensional materials. Recently, hyperbolic plasmon resonance modes are observed in exfoliated WTe2 films, a type-II Weyl semimetal with layered structure, providing a platform for the assembly of plasmons with hyperbolicity and exotic topological properties. However, the plasmon modes were observed in relatively thick and small-area films, which restrict the tunability and application for plasmons. Here, large-area (~ cm) WTe2 films with different thickness are grown by chemical vapor deposition method, in which plasmon resonance modes are observed in films with different thickness down to about 8 nm. Hybridization of plasmon and surface polar phonons of the substrate is revealed by mapping the plasmon dispersion. The plasmon frequency is demonstrated to be tunable by changing the temperature and film thickness. Our results facilitate the development of a tunable and scalable WTe2 plasmonic system for revealing topological properties and towards various applications in sensing, imaging and light modulation.
Quantum topological materials, exemplified by topological insulators, three-dimensional Dirac semimetals and Weyl semimetals, have attracted much attention recently because of their unique electronic structure and physical properties. Very lately it is proposed that the three-dimensional Weyl semimetals can be further classified into two types. In the type I Weyl semimetals, a topologically protected linear crossing of two bands, i.e., a Weyl point, occurs at the Fermi level resulting in a point-like Fermi surface. In the type II Weyl semimetals, the Weyl point emerges from a contact of an electron and a hole pocket at the boundary resulting in a highly tilted Weyl cone. In type II Weyl semimetals, the Lorentz invariance is violated and a fundamentally new kind of Weyl Fermions is produced that leads to new physical properties. WTe2 is interesting because it exhibits anomalously large magnetoresistance. It has ignited a new excitement because it is proposed to be the first candidate of realizing type II Weyl Fermions. Here we report our angle-resolved photoemission (ARPES) evidence on identifying the type II Weyl Fermion state in WTe2. By utilizing our latest generation laser-based ARPES system with superior energy and momentum resolutions, we have revealed a full picture on the electronic structure of WTe2. Clear surface state has been identified and its connection with the bulk electronic states in the momentum and energy space shows a good agreement with the calculated band structures with the type II Weyl states. Our results provide spectroscopic evidence on the observation of type II Weyl states in WTe2. It has laid a foundation for further exploration of novel phenomena and physical properties in the type II Weyl semimetals.
By the first-principles electronic structure calculations, we have systematically studied the electronic structures of recently discovered extremely large magnetoresistance (XMR) materials LaSb and LaBi. We find that both LaSb and LaBi are semimetals with the electron and hole carriers in perfect balance. The calculated carrier densities in the order of $10^{20}$ cm$^{-3}$ are in good agreement with the experimental values, implying long mean free time of carriers and thus high carrier mobilities. With a semiclassical two-band model, the perfect charge compensation and high carrier mobilities naturally explain (i) the XMR observed in LaSb and LaBi; (ii) the non-saturating quadratic dependence of XMR on external magnetic field; and (iii) the resistivity plateau in the turn-on temperature behavior at very low temperatures. The explanation of these features without resorting to the topological effect indicates that they should be the common characteristics of all perfectly electron-hole compensated semimetals.
In a two-dimensional electron system, microwave radiation may induce giant resistance oscillations. Their origin has been debated controversially and numerous mechanisms based on very different physical phenomena have been invoked. However none of them have been unambiguously experimentally identified, since they produce similar effects in transport studies. The capacitance of a two-subband system is sensitive to a redistribution of electrons over energy states, since it entails a shift of the electron charge perpendicular to the plane. In such a system microwave induced magnetocapacitance oscillations have been observed. They can only be accounted for by an electron distribution function oscillating with energy due to Landau quantization, one of the quantum mechanisms proposed for the resistance oscillations.