Abstract
Platinum ditelluride has recently been characterized, based on angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy data and electronic band structure calculations, as a possible representative of type-II Dirac semimetals. Here, we report on the magnetotransport behavior (electrical resistivity, Hall effect) in this compound, investigated on high-quality single-crystalline specimens. The magnetoresistance (MR) of PtTe2 is large (over 3000% at T = 1.8 K in B = 9 T) and unsaturated in strong fields in the entire temperature range studied. The MR isotherms obey a Kohler’s type scaling with the exponent m = 1.69, different from the case of ideal electron-hole compensation. In applied magnetic fields, the resistivity shows a low-temperature plateau, characteristic of topological semimetals. In strong fields, well-resolved Shubnikov – de Haas (SdH) oscillations with two principle frequencies were found, and their analysis yielded charge mobilities of the order of 103 cm2 V−1 s−1 and rather small effective masses of charge carriers, 0.11 me and 0.21 me. However, the extracted Berry phases point to trivial character of the electronic bands involved in the SdH oscillations. The Hall effect data corroborated a multi-band character of the electrical conductivity in PtTe2, with moderate charge compensation.
Highlights
Topological semimetals (TSs) form an outstanding group of materials characterized by perfect linear dispersion of some bulk electronic states[1,2]
Within the former group of compounds, MoTe2 and WTe2 have been classified as type-II Weyl semimetals[14,21], whereas platinum and palladium dichalcogenides have been established via angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) experiments to represent the family of type-II Dirac semimetals[3,18,22]
The conclusion was hampered by the existence of trivial bands at the Fermi level, which significantly contribute to the electrical transport
Summary
Topological semimetals (TSs) form an outstanding group of materials characterized by perfect linear dispersion of some bulk electronic states[1,2]. In accordance with presence or absence of Lorentz invariance, one discriminates type-I and type-II systems[3] In the latter class of TSs, Dirac cone is strongly tilted with respect to Fermi level[4]. Negative MR was found in many TSs, more often in type-I materials[7,8,9,10,11] and in a few type-II systems[12] Another smoking-gun signature of TSs is the existence of topological surface states, which have a form of Fermi-arcs[1,2]. Their presence was confirmed experimentally in a large number of TSs, among them Cd3As213, MoTe214, WTe215 and TaAs16. We investigated the galvanomagnetic properties of PtTe2 with the main aim to discern features appearing due to the alleged nontrivial topology of its electronic band structure
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