No Arabic abstract
Thermoelectric properties of polycrystalline p-type ZrTe5 are reported in temperature (T) range 2 - 340 K. Thermoelectric power (S) is positive and reaches up to 458 uV/K at 340 K on increasing T. The value of Fermi energy 16 meV, suggests low carrier density of ~ 9.5 X 10^18 cm-3. A sharp anomaly in S data is observed at 38 K, which seems intrinsic to p-type ZrTe5. The thermal conductivity value is low (2 W/m-K at T = 300 K) with major contribution from lattice part. Electrical resistivity data shows metal to semiconductor transition at T ~ 150 K and non-Arrhenius behavior in the semiconducting region. The figure of merit zT (0.026 at T = 300 K) is ~ 63% higher than HfTe5 (0.016), and better than the conventional SnTe, p-type PbTe and bipolar pristine ZrTe5 compounds.
The low-temperature thermal conductivity in polycrystalline graphene is theoretically studied. The contributions from three branches of acoustic phonons are calculated by taking into account scattering on sample borders, point defects and grain boundaries. Phonon scattering due to sample borders and grain boundaries is shown to result in a $T^{alpha}$-behaviour in the thermal conductivity where $alpha$ varies between 1 and 2. This behaviour is found to be more pronounced for nanosized grain boundaries. PACS: 65.80.Ck, 81.05.ue, 73.43.Cd
The Weyl semimetal NbP exhibits an extremely large magnetoresistance (MR) and an ultra-high mobility. The large MR originates from a combination of the nearly perfect compensation between electron- and hole-type charge carriers and the high mobility, which is relevant to the topological band structure. In this work we report on temperature- and field-dependent thermopower and thermal conductivity experiments on NbP. Additionally, we carried out complementary heat capacity, magnetization, and electrical resistivity measurements. We found a giant adiabatic magnetothermopower with a maximum of 800 $mu$V/K at 50 K in a field of 9 T. Such large effects have been observed rarely in bulk materials. We suggest that the origin of this effect might be related to the high charge-carrier mobility. We further observe pronounced quantum oscillations in both thermal conductivity and thermopower. The obtained frequencies compare well with our heat capacity and magnetization data.
Recently H. Wang et al. (arXiv 1704.00995) have reported quantum oscillation in magnetoresistance with the periodicity in logarithmic of magnetic field (B) for the p-type ZrTe5. They have ascribed this type of behavior to the discrete scale invariance, resulting from Effimov bound states. We have prepared high quality stoichiometric (p-type) ZrTe5 polycrystals and observed magnetoresistance (MR) oscillations, which are periodic in B. These oscillations are in contrast to usual SdH oscillations or log B dependent oscillations as observed for tellurium deficient and stoichiometric ZrTe5 respectively. The MR follows the three dimensional Weyl semimetal like behavior, and Kohlers rule is obeyed at low temperatures. We obtained small cyclotron effective mass (m* = 0.05 m_e), very high mobility of 2.2 X 10^4 cm^2/V.s and the signature of topological protected surface states in the compound. The magnetic data shows zero cusp paramagnetic susceptibility which supports the existence of topological surface states in ZrTe5.
We report a technique for transferring large areas of the CVD-grown, few-layer MoS2 from the original substrate to another arbitrary substrate and onto holey substrates, in order to obtain free-standing structures. The method consists of a polymer- and residue-free, surface-tension-assisted wet transfer, in which we take advantage of the hydrophobic properties of the MoS2. The methods yields better quality transferred layers, with fewer cracks and defects, and less contamination than the widely used PMMA-mediated transfer and allows fabrication of few-layer, fee-standing structures with diameters up to 100 micro-m. We report thermal conductivity measurements by means of contactless Raman thermometry on the so-fabricated samples. The measurements revealed a strong reduction in the in-plane thermal conductivity down to 0.5 W/mK. The results are explained using finite elements method simulations for a polycrystalline film.
The anomalous Hall effect (AHE) has been studied systematically in the low-conductivity ferromagnetic oxide Fe$_{3-x}$Zn$_x$O$_4$ with $x = 0$, 0.1, and 0.5. We used (001), (110), and (111) oriented epitaxial Fe$_{3-x}$Zn$_x$O$_4$ films grown on MgO and sapphire substrates in different oxygen partial pressure to analyze the dependence of the AHE on crystallographic orientation, Zn content, strain state, and oxygen deficiency. Despite substantial differences in the magnetic properties and magnitudes of the anomalous Hall conductivity $sigma_{xy}^{rm AHE}$ and the longitudinal conductivity $sigma_{xx}$ over several orders of magnitude, a universal scaling relation $sigma_{xy}^{rm AHE} propto sigma_{xx}^{alpha}$ with $alpha = 1.69 pm 0.08$ was found for all investigated samples. Our results are in agreement with recent theoretical and experimental findings for ferromagnetic metals in the dirty limit, where transport is by metallic conduction. We find the same scaling relation for magnetite, where hopping transport prevails. The fact that this relation is independent of crystallographic orientation, Zn content, strain state, and oxygen deficiency suggests that it is universal and particularly does not depend on the nature of the transport mechanism.