High Electron Mobility and Large Magnetoresistance in the Half-Heusler Semimetal LuPtBi

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of LuPtBi, a half-Heusler semimetal with exceptionally high electron mobility and large, non-saturating magnetoresistance, promising for future magneto-electric applications.

Contribution

It introduces LuPtBi as a new high-mobility, large MR material with detailed analysis of its electronic structure and transport properties, advancing material design strategies.

Findings

Electron mobility up to 79000 cm2/Vs at 2 K

Magnetoresistance as large as 3200% at 2 K

High mobility persists at room temperature exceeding 10500 cm2/Vs

Abstract

Materials with high carrier mobility showing large magnetoresistance (MR) have recently received much attention because of potential applications in future high-performance magneto-electric devices. Here, we report on the discovery of an electron-hole-compensated half-Heusler semimetal LuPtBi that exhibits an extremely high electron mobility of up to 79000 cm2/Vs with a non-saturating positive MR as large as 3200% at 2 K. Remarkably, the mobility at 300 K is found to exceed 10500 cm2/Vs, which is among the highest values reported in three-dimensional bulk materials thus far. The clean Shubnikov-de Haas quantum oscillation observed at low temperatures and the first-principles calculations together indicate that the high electron mobility is due to a rather small effective carrier mass caused by the distinctive band structure of the crystal. Our finding provide a new approach for finding large, high-mobility MR materials by designing an appropriate Fermi surface topology starting from simple electron-hole-compensated semimetals.