Electronic properties of type-II Weyl semimetal WTe$_2$. A review perspective

TL;DR

This review discusses the unique electronic properties of the type-II Weyl semimetal WTe$_2$, highlighting its non-saturating magnetoresistance and potential for quantum applications, within the context of topological materials research.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of WTe$_2$'s electronic properties and recent experimental findings, emphasizing its significance in topological materials and potential applications.

Findings

WTe$_2$ exhibits non-saturating magnetoresistance at high magnetic fields.

WTe$_2$ demonstrates perfect electron-hole carrier balance.

WTe$_2$ is a promising candidate for quantum computing applications.

Abstract

Currently, there is a flurry of research interest on materials with an unconventional electronic structure, and we have already seen significant progress in their understanding and engineering towards real-life applications. The interest erupted with the discovery of graphene and topological insulators in the previous decade. The electrons in graphene simulate massless Dirac Fermions with a linearly dispersing Dirac cone in their band structure, while in topological insulators, the electronic bands wind non-trivially in momentum space giving rise to gapless surface states and bulk bandgap. Weyl semimetals in condensed matter systems are the latest addition to this growing family of topological materials. Weyl Fermions are known in the context of high energy physics since almost the beginning of quantum mechanics. They apparently violate charge conservation rules, displaying the "chiral anomaly", with such remarkable properties recently theoretically predicted and experimentally verified to exist as low energy quasiparticle states in certain condensed matter systems. Not only are these new materials extremely important for our fundamental understanding of quantum phenomena, but also they exhibit completely different transport phenomena. For example, massless Fermions are susceptible to scattering from non-magnetic impurities. Dirac semimetals exhibit non-saturating extremely large magnetoresistance as a consequence of their robust electronic bands being protected by time reversal symmetry. These open up whole new possibilities for materials engineering and applications including quantum computing. In this review, we recapitulate some of the outstanding properties of WTe$_2$, namely, its non-saturating titanic magnetoresistance due to perfect electron and hole carrier balance up to a very high magnetic field observed for the very first time. (Continued. Please see the main article).