Abstract
Recent experiments have revealed spectacular transport properties in semimetals, such as the large, non-saturating magnetoresistance exhibited by WTe2 (ref. 1). Topological semimetals with massless relativistic electrons have also been predicted2 as three-dimensional analogues of graphene3. These systems are known as Weyl semimetals, and are predicted to have a range of exotic transport properties and surface states4,5,6,7, distinct from those of topological insulators8,9. Here we examine the magneto-transport properties of NbP, a material the band structure of which has been predicted to combine the hallmarks of a Weyl semimetal10,11 with those of a normal semimetal. We observe an extremely large magnetoresistance of 850,000% at 1.85 K (250% at room temperature) in a magnetic field of up to 9 T, without any signs of saturation, and an ultrahigh carrier mobility of 5 × 106 cm2 V−1 s−1 that accompanied by strong Shubnikov–de Haas (SdH) oscillations. NbP therefore presents a unique example of a material combining topological and conventional electronic phases, with intriguing physical properties resulting from their interplay.
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Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG (Project No.EB 518/1-1 of DFG-SPP 1666 ‘Topological Insulators’) and by the ERC Advanced Grant No. (291472) ‘Idea Heusler’. Y.C. acknowledge support from the EPSRC (UK) grant EP/K04074X/1 and a DARPA (US) MESO project (no. N66001-11-1-4105). We acknowledge the support of the High Magnetic Field Laboratory Dresden (HLD) at HZDR and High Field Magnet Laboratory Nijmegen (HFML-RU/FOM), members of the European Magnetic Field Laboratory (EMFL).
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B.Y. conceived the original idea for the project. C.S. performed the low-field PPMS measurement with the help of M.N. and W.S. C.S., I.L. and U.Z. performed the 30 T static magnetic field measurements. Y.Skourski, A.K.N. and J.W. performed the pulsed high magnetic field experiments. M.S. grew the single-crystal samples. Y.Sun and B.Y. calculated band structures. H.B. and Y.G. characterized the crystal structure. Z.L. and Y.C. contributed to helpful discussions. All authors analysed the results. B.Y., C.S. and A.K.N. wrote the manuscript with substantial contributions from all authors. C.F. supervised the project.
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Shekhar, C., Nayak, A., Sun, Y. et al. Extremely large magnetoresistance and ultrahigh mobility in the topological Weyl semimetal candidate NbP. Nature Phys 11, 645–649 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3372
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3372
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