Anomalous Hall effect and magnetoresistance in microribbons of the magnetic Weyl semimetal candidate ${\mathrm{PrRhC}}_{2}$

Anomalous Hall effect and magnetoresistance in microribbons of the magnetic Weyl semimetal candidate ${PrRhC}_{2}$

Mickey Martini, Helena Reichlova, Laura T. Corredor, Dominik Kriegner, Yejin Lee, Luca Tomarchio, Kornelius Nielsch, Ali G. Moghaddam, Jeroen van den Brink, Bernd Büchner, Sabine Wurmehl, Vitaliy Romaka, and Andy Thomas

Phys. Rev. Materials 7, 104205 – Published 16 October 2023

Abstract

${PrRhC}_{2}$ belongs to the rare-earth carbides family, whose properties are of special interest among topological semimetals due to the simultaneous breaking of both inversion and time-reversal symmetry. The concomitant absence of both symmetries grants the possibility to tune the Weyl nodes chirality and to enhance topological effects such as the chiral anomaly. In this paper, we report on the synthesis and compare the magnetotransport measurements of polycrystalline ${PrRhC}_{2}$ samples and a single-crystalline ${PrRhC}_{2}$ sample. Using a remarkable and sophisticated technique, the ${PrRhC}_{2}$ single crystal is prepared via focused-ion-beam cutting from the polycrystalline material. Our magnetometric and specific heat analyses reveal a noncollinear antiferromagnetic state below $20 K$ , as well as short-range magnetic correlations and/or magnetic fluctuations well above the onset of the magnetic transition. The transport measurements on the ${PrRhC}_{2}$ single crystal display an electrical resistivity peak at $3 K$ and an anomalous Hall effect below $6 K$ indicative of a net magnetization component in the ordered state. Furthermore, we study the angular variation of magnetoresistivities as a function of the angle between the in-plane magnetic field and the injected electrical current. We find that both the transverse and the longitudinal resistivities exhibit fourfold angular dependencies due to higher-order terms in the resistivity tensor, consistent with the orthorhombic crystal symmetry of ${PrRhC}_{2}$ . Our experimental results may be interpreted as features of topological Weyl semimetallic behavior in the magnetotransport properties.

Received 2 August 2023
Accepted 25 September 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.7.104205

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Geometric & topological phases Hall effect Magnetic order Magnetic phase transitions Magnetic susceptibility Magnetism Specific heat

Quantum Information, Science & TechnologyCondensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Mickey Martini^1,2,*, Helena Reichlova^3,4, Laura T. Corredor ¹, Dominik Kriegner ³, Yejin Lee^1,2, Luca Tomarchio^1,5,6, Kornelius Nielsch^1,2,7, Ali G. Moghaddam ^1,8,9, Jeroen van den Brink^1,10, Bernd Büchner^1,4, Sabine Wurmehl¹, Vitaliy Romaka¹, and Andy Thomas^1,4,†

¹Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Science Dresden (IFW Dresden), 01069 Dresden, Germany
²Institute of Applied Physics, Technische Universität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany
³Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Na Slovance 1999/2, 18221 Prague, Czech Republic
⁴Institut für Festkörper- und Materialphysik (IFMP), Technische Universität Dresden, 01069 Dresden, Germany
⁵Department of Physics, Sapienza University, 00185 Rome, Italy
⁶INFN Section of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy
⁷Institute of Materials Science, Technische Universität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany
⁸Department of Physics, Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences (IASBS), Zanjan 45137-66731, Iran
⁹Computational Physics Laboratory, Physics Unit, Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Tampere University, FI-33014 Tampere, Finland
¹⁰Institute for Theoretical Physics and Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat, Technische Universität Dresden, 01069 Dresden, Germany

^*m.martini@ifw-dresden.de
^†a.thomas@ifw-dresden.de

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Vol. 7, Iss. 10 — October 2023

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Figure 1
(a) Crystal structure of ${PrRhC}_{2}$ (orthorhombic symmetry, space group $A m m 2$ ) including the expected carbon dimers. The unit cell is indicated by black solid lines. (b) Magnetic susceptibility (SI units) of ${PrRhC}_{2}$ polycrystal measured while increasing the temperature in the presence of an external magnetic field of $1 T$ (brown curve) and the reciprocal of the susceptibility vs temperature (blue dots) and a Curie-Weiss (CW) fit to the data (solid black line). This linear fit yields a CW temperature $Θ_{CW}$ of about $- 18.5$ K. (c) Magnetic susceptibility vs temperatures recorded in different magnetic fields following zero-field-cooled (ZFC) and field-cooled (FC) protocols. (d) Magnetization curves as a function of magnetic field at different temperatures. Inset: Magnetization at low field and low temperatures (2, 10, and 15 K).
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Figure 2
(a) Zero-field specific heat of ${PrRhC}_{2}$ . The red curve represents the lattice specific heat obtained using a Debye model; for details, see text. Inset: zero-field magnetic specific heat plotted as $C_{mag} / T$ vs $T$ (left scale) together with the magnetic entropy (right scale). (b) Temperature dependence of the specific heat for applied magnetic fields of 1 and 5 T. The inset shows a zoom of the low-temperature region.
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Figure 3
(a) Close-up microscopy image of the device. The lamella is obtained with a FIB cut, and electrical contacts are defined by standard optical lithography. (b) Schematic of the device with the coordinate system. (c) Electrical resistivity measured in a four-point geometry at low temperatures (main panel) and in the full range of temperatures (inset).
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Figure 4
(a) Magnetoresistance ratio vs external magnetic field at several temperatures. (b) Transversal resistivity as a function of magnetic field at some low temperatures. The linear background associated with the ordinary Hall effect is subtracted, and an offset is added for better visualization.
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Figure 5
(a) Longitudinal resistivity and (b) transversal resistivity in the presence of an in-plane 5 T field as a function of the angle between the current line and the magnetic field direction at $2 K$ . The solid black curves are fits based on the phenomenological relations given in the text for $ρ_{x x}$ and $ρ_{y x}$ . The fitted values for the parameters of longitudinal signal are $C_{0} = 521, C_{2} = 21, C_{4} = - 4$ , and $ϕ_{0} = 65^{\circ}$ . For the transverse resistivity the fitting coefficients are $C_{1}^{'} = 2.6, C_{2}^{'} = 2.0, C_{4}^{'} = 0.5, ϕ_{0}^{'} = 14 . 5^{\circ}$ , and $θ_{tilt} = 30^{\circ}$ . The unit of all coefficients $C_{i}$ , and $C_{i}^{'}$ is $µ Ω cm$ , the same as the resistivities.
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Physical Review Materials

Anomalous Hall effect and magnetoresistance in microribbons of the magnetic Weyl semimetal candidate PrRhC2

Mickey Martini, Helena Reichlova, Laura T. Corredor, Dominik Kriegner, Yejin Lee, Luca Tomarchio, Kornelius Nielsch, Ali G. Moghaddam, Jeroen van den Brink, Bernd Büchner, Sabine Wurmehl, Vitaliy Romaka, and Andy Thomas

Phys. Rev. Materials 7, 104205 – Published 16 October 2023

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Anomalous Hall effect and magnetoresistance in microribbons of the magnetic Weyl semimetal candidate ${PrRhC}_{2}$