Giant negative magnetoresistance induced by the chiral anomaly in individual Cd3As2 nanowires

Dirac electronic materials beyond graphene and topological insulators have recently attracted considerable attention. Cd3As2 is a Dirac semimetal with linear dispersion along all three momentum directions and can be viewed as a three-dimensional analogue of graphene. By breaking of either time-rever...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2015-12, Vol.6 (1), p.10137-10137, Article 10137
Main Authors: Li, Cai-Zhen, Wang, Li-Xian, Liu, Haiwen, Wang, Jian, Liao, Zhi-Min, Yu, Da-Peng
Format: Article
Language:eng
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Summary:Dirac electronic materials beyond graphene and topological insulators have recently attracted considerable attention. Cd3As2 is a Dirac semimetal with linear dispersion along all three momentum directions and can be viewed as a three-dimensional analogue of graphene. By breaking of either time-reversal symmetry or spatial inversion symmetry, the Dirac semimetal is believed to transform into a Weyl semimetal with an exotic chiral anomaly effect, however the experimental evidence of the chiral anomaly is still missing in Cd3As2. Here we show a large negative magnetoresistance with magnitude of -63% at 60 K and -11% at 300 K in individual Cd3As2 nanowires. The negative magnetoresistance can be modulated by gate voltage and temperature through tuning the density of chiral states at the Fermi level and the inter-valley scatterings between Weyl nodes. The results give evidence of the chiral anomaly effect and are valuable for understanding the Weyl fermions in Dirac semimetals.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723