Anisotropic and High-Mobility Electronic Transport in a Quasi 2D Antiferromagnet NdSb2
Advancements in low-dimensional functional device technology heavily relyon the discovery of suitable materials which have interesting physicalproperties as well as can be exfoliated down to the 2D limit. Exfoliablehigh-mobility magnets are one such class of materials that, not due to lack ofeffort, has been limited to only a handful of options. So far, most of theattention has been focused on the van der Waals (vdW) systems. However,even within the non-vdW, layered materials, it is possible to find all thesedesirable features. Using chemical reasoning, it is found that NdSb2is anideal example. Even with a relatively small interlayer distance, this materialcan be exfoliated down to few layers. NdSb2has an antiferromagnetic groundstate with a quasi 2D spin arrangement. The bulk crystals show a very large,non-saturating magnetoresistance along with highly anisotropic electronictransport properties. It is confirmed that this anisotropy originates from the2D Fermi pockets which also imply a rather quasi 2D confinement of thecharge carrier density. Both electron and hole-type carriers show very highmobilities. The possible non-collinear spin arrangement also results in ananomalous Hall effect.
