2016/02/16 by Peng-Jie Guo, Peng‐Jie Guo, Huan-Cheng Yang +3
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Band gap #Charge carrier #Condensed matter physics #Electron #Electron mobility #Electronic band structure #Magnetic and transport properties of perovskites and related materials #Magnetic field #Magnetoresistance #Materials science #Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum mechanics #Rare-earth and actinide compounds #Semiclassical physics #Semimetal #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.93.235142
published as Phys. Rev. B 93, 235142 (2016) · 7 pages, 7 figures, 1 table
arxiv created 2016/02/16 · openalex publication_date 2016/06/21 · arxiv updated 2016/06/23 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
By the first-principles electronic structure calculations, we have systematically studied the electronic structures of recently discovered extremely large magnetoresistance (XMR) materials LaSb and LaBi. We find that both LaSb and LaBi are semimetals with the electron and hole carriers in balance. The calculated carrier densities on the order of 1020\phantom\rule0.28em0excm^\ensuremath-3 are in good agreement with the experimental values, implying long mean-free time of carriers at low temperatures and thus high carrier mobilities. With a semiclassical two-band model, the charge compensation and high carrier mobilities naturally explain: (i) the XMR observed in LaSb and LaBi, (ii) the nonsaturating quadratic dependence of XMR on an external magnetic field, and (iii) the resistivity plateau in the turn-on temperature behavior at very low temperatures. The explanation of these features without resorting to the topological effect indicates that they should be the common characteristics of all electron-hole compensated semimetals.