Negative Magnetoresistance in Hopping Regime of Lightly Doped Thermoelectric SnSe

Abstract

Semiconducting SnSe, an analog of black phosphorus, recently attracted great scientific interest due to a disputed report of a large thermoelectric figure of merit, which has not been reproduced subsequently. Here we concentrate on the low-temperature ground state. To gain a better understanding of the system, we present magneto-transport properties in high-quality single crystals of as-grown, lightly doped SnSe down to liquid helium temperatures. We show that SnSe behaves as a p-type doped semiconductor in the vicinity of a metal-insulator transition. Electronic transport at the lowest temperatures is dominated by the hopping mechanism. Negative magnetoresistance at low fields is well described by antilocalization, while positive magnetoresistance at higher fields is consistent with the shrinkage of localized impurity wavefunctions. At higher temperatures, a dilute metallic regime is realized where elusive T2 and B2 resistivity dependence is observed, posing a challenge to theoretical comprehension of the underlying physical mechanism.