2003/11/01 by Meera M. Parish, M. M. Parish, P. B. Littlewood · 22 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Magnetic and transport properties of perovskites and related materials #Phase-change materials and chalcogenides #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #cond-mat
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/nature02073
published as Nature 426 (2003) 162-165 · 14 pages
openalex publication_date 2003/11/01 · arxiv created 2003/12/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The resistance of a homogeneous semiconductor increases quadratically with magnetic field at low fields and, except in very special cases, saturates at fields much larger than the inverse of the carrier mobility, a number typically of order 1 Tesla. Here, we argue that a macroscopically disordered and strongly inhomogeneous semiconductor will instead show a non-saturating magnetoresistance, with typically a quasi-linear behaviour up to very large fields, and possibly also extending down to very low fields, depending on the degree of inhomogeneity. We offer this as a possible explanation of the observed anomalously large magnetoresistance in doped silver chalcogenides. Furthermore, our model of an inhomogeneous semiconductor can be developed into magnetoresistive devices that possess a large, controllable, linear response.