Electrical transport properties of half-heusler ScPdBi single crystals under extreme conditions

Abstract

We synthesize single-crystals of ScPdBi, a Half-Heusler compound by self-flux growth technique and report its physical properties such as magneto-transport and specific heat down to 2 K. Resistivity measurements were performed on these single-crystals at ambient and high-pressure conditions. Temperature-dependent resistivity measurements reveal that ScPdBi shows the metallic character at ambient pressure and without applied magnetic field. The metallic character of ScPdBi was un-altered even in extreme conditions such as high pressure (up to 19 GPa) and magnetic field (up to 9 T). We observe an upturn in the resistivity which persists even at high pressure. We rule-out the presence of the Kondo effect by performing the specific heat measurements down to 2 K which resulted in a low Sommerfeld coefficient (γ ≈ 2.6 ± 0.9 mJ mol−1 K−2). This anomaly in resistivity below 30 K could be attributed to an electron-hole scattering process or a carrier imbalance effect.