Abstract
We report the effect of 4f electron doping on structural, electrical, and magneto-transport properties of Dy doped half Heusler Y1-x(Dy)xPdBi (x = 0, 0.2, 0.5, and 1) thin films grown by pulsed laser deposition. The electrical transport measurements show a typical semi-metallic behavior in the temperature range of 3 K ≤ T ≤ 300 K and a sharp drop in resistivity at low temperatures (<3 K) for all the samples. Magneto-transport measurements and Shubnikov de-Hass oscillations at high magnetic fields demonstrate that for these topologically non-trivial samples, Dy doping induced variation of spin–orbit coupling strength and lattice density plays an active role in modifying the Fermi surface, carrier concentration, and the effective electron mass of massless carriers. There is a uniform suppression of the onset of superconductivity-like phenomena with increased Dy doping, which is possibly related to the increasing local exchange field arising from the 4f electrons in Dy. Our results indicate that we can tune various band structure parameters of YPdBi by f electron doping, and strained thin films of Y1-x(Dy)xPdBi show surface dominated relativistic carrier transport at low temperatures.
Highlights
Several members of rare-earth (R)-based RPdBi half Heusler (HH) family are known to exhibit localized magnetism of R3+ ions and order antiferromagnetically at low temperature[1,2]
The RPdBi HH can be classified into either topologically trivial or non-trivial state depending on the lattice density and spin orbit coupling strength of the R element; which further varies with lattice contraction (LC) and effective nuclear charge (Z) as Z4, respectively[2,4–6]
Using DFT, Chadov et al predicted that band structure of YPdBi can be tuned between topologically trivial and non–trivial state by varying the lattice constant and/or spin orbit coupling strength of the material system[6]
Summary
(b) sample D2, (c) sample D5 and (d) sample DPB. (e) Gonio-mode XRD patterns of D0, D2 and. The sharp drop in xx of Y1-x(Dy)xPdBi thin films and disappearance of this transition with increasing external magnetic field most likely indicates the onset of a superconducting state. The minimum value of decreases with decrease in Dy content which is correlated with the superconducting transition temperature; D0 with a superconducting transition temperature of 1.75 K showing a significantly lower at 2 K compared to DPB sample, whose onset of superconductivity is well below 1 K This implies that the onset of superconductivity increases the bulk contribution to the conduction channels. The value of the exponent is very close to -0.5 above the onset transition temperatures (≥ 2.5K), in all these samples showing they are in the 2D limit[32,35,42]
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