APS March Meeting 2016
Volume 61, Number 2
Monday–Friday, March 14–18, 2016;
Baltimore, Maryland
Session S13: 2D Materials: Semimetals
11:15 AM–2:15 PM,
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Room: 309
Sponsoring
Unit:
DMP
Chair: Xuan Gao, Case Western Reserve University
Abstract ID: BAPS.2016.MAR.S13.5
Abstract: S13.00005 : Three-dimensional Anisotropy and Kohler's Rule Scaling of the Magnetoresistance in WTe$_2$*
12:27 PM–1:03 PM
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Abstract
Author:
Yong-Lei Wang
(Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory \& Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame)
Tungsten ditelluride (WTe$_2$) was recently discovered to have extremely large magnetoresistance (XMR) at low temperatures and exhibits a transformative 'turn-on' temperature behavior: when the applied magnetic field $H$ is above a certain value, the resistivity versus temperature $\rho(T)$ curve shows a minimum at a field dependent temperature $T^*(H)$. Since WTe$_2$ is a layered compound with metal layers sandwiched between adjacent insulating chalcogenide layers, it is typically considered to be a two dimensional (2D) material, whereby the anisotropic magnetoresistance is attributed only to the perpendicular component of the magnetic field. Moreover, the 'turn-on' temperature behavior has been interpreted as a magnetic-field-driven metal-insulator transition or attributed to an electronic structure change. In this talk I will report on two scaling behaviors of the magnetoresistance in WTe$_2$. The first shows that the angle dependence of the magnetoresistance follows a conventional 3D anisotropy scaling and hence reveals the electrical 3D nature of WTe$_2$ [1]. The second demonstrates that the $\rho(T,H)$ curves, including those with 'turn-on' temperature behavior, can be scaled with Kohler's rule [2]. The observed Kohler's rule scaling excludes the possible existence of a magnetic-field-driven metal-insulator transition or significant contribution of an electronic structure change to the low-temperature XMR in WTe$_2$. It indicates that both the XMR and the 'turn-on' behavior originate from the high mobilities of the charge carriers, which are strongly temperature dependent in WTe$_2$. We also derived quantitative expressions for the magnetic field dependence of the 'turn-on' temperature $T^*(H)$ and for the temperature dependence of the resistivity $\rho(T^*,H)$ at the onset of the XMR behavior.
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In collaboration with L. R. Thoutam, Z. L. Xiao, J. Hu, S. Das, Z. Q. Mao, J. Wei, R. Divan, A. Luican-Mayer, G. W. Crabtree, and W. K. Kwok
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References:
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$[1]$ L. R. Thoutam, Y. L.Wang et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 046602 (2015)
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$[2]$ Y. L. Wang et al. Phys. Rev. B 92, 180402(R) (2015)
*This work was supported by the U.S. DOE, Office of Science, BES, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division.
To cite this abstract, use the following reference: http://meetings.aps.org/link/BAPS.2016.MAR.S13.5