Drastic effect of the Mn-substitution in the strongly correlated semiconductor FeSb2.

Abstract

We report the effects of Mn substitution, corresponding to hole doping, on the electronic properties of the narrow gap semiconductor, FeSb2, using single crystals of Fe1−xMnxSb2 grown by the Sb flux method. The orthorhombic Pnnm structure was confirmed by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) for the pure and Mn-substituted samples. Their crystal structure parameters were refined using the Rietveld method. The chemical composition was investigated by wavelength-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (WDX). The solubility limit of Mn in FeSb2 is xmax ∼ 0.05 and the lattice constants change monotonically with increasing the actual Mn concentration. A drastic change from semiconducting to metallic electronic transports was found at very low Mn concentration at x ∼ 0.01. Our experimental results and analysis indicate that the substitution of a small amount of Mn changes drastically the electronic state in FeSb2 as well as the Co-substitution does: closing of the narrow gap and emergence of the density of states (DOS) at the Fermi level.