Facile and fast growth of high mobility nanoribbons of ZrTe$_5$

TL;DR

This paper presents a rapid, silicon-assisted chemical vapor transport method for synthesizing high-mobility ZrTe$_5$ nanoribbons, enabling advanced studies of their topological properties and potential device applications.

Contribution

It introduces a fast, efficient growth technique for ultra-thin ZrTe$_5$ nanoribbons with high mobility, surpassing previous methods for bulk crystal growth.

Findings

Nanoribbons as thin as 20 nm achieved

Growth rate over ten times faster than previous methods

Carrier mobility exceeds 30,000 cm$^2$/Vs

Abstract

Recently, ZrTe$_5$ has received a lot of attention as it exhibits various topological phases, such as weak and strong topological insulators, a Dirac semimetal, and a quantum spin Hall insulator in the monolayer limit. While most of studies have been focused on the three-dimensional bulk material, it is highly desired to obtain nanostructured materials due to their advantages in device applications. We report the synthesis and characterizations of ZrTe$_5$ nanoribbons. Via a silicon-assisted chemical vapor transport method, long nanoribbons with thickness as thin as 20 nm can be grown. The growth rate is over an order of magnitude faster than the previous method for growth of bulk crystals. Moreover, transport studies show that nanoribbons are of low unintentional doping and high carrier mobility, over 30,000 cm$^2$/Vs, which enable reliable determination of the Berry phase of $\pi$ in the $ac$ plane from quantum oscillations. Our method holds great potential in growth of high quality ultra-thin nanostructures of ZrTe$_5$.