Structural and transport properties of 4f electron doped Y1-x(Dy)xPdBi topological semi-metallic thin films

TL;DR

This study investigates how 4f electron doping with Dy affects the structural, electrical, and magneto-transport properties of YPdBi thin films, revealing tunable topological and superconducting features.

Contribution

It demonstrates that Dy doping induces lattice contraction and modifies electronic properties, enabling control over band structure and surface relativistic transport in YPdBi thin films.

Findings

Dy doping causes lattice contraction up to 1.3%.

Transport remains semi-metallic with low-temperature resistivity drops.

Doping suppresses superconductivity and alters Fermi surface properties.

Abstract

We report the effect of 4f electron doping on structural, electrical and magneto-transport properties of Dy doped half Heusler Y1-x(Dy)xPdBi (x =0, 0.2, 0.5, 1) thin films grown by pulsed laser deposition. The Dy doping leads to lattice contraction which increases from 0% for the parent x =0 sample to approx 1.3% for x=1 sample with increase in Dy doping. The electrical transport measurements show a typical semi-metallic behaviour in the temperature range 3K to 300K and a sharp drop in resistivity at low temperatures (less than 3K) for all the samples. Magnetotransport measurements and Shubnikov de-Hass oscillations at high magnetic fields demonstrate that for these topologically non-trivial samples, Dy doping induced lattice contraction plays an active role in modifying the Fermi surface, carrier concentration and the effective electron mass. There is an uniform suppression of the onset of superconductivity with increased Dy doping which is possibly related to the increasing local exchange field arising from the 4f electrons in Dy. Our results indicate that we can tune various band structure parameters of YPdBi by f electron doping and strained thin films of Y1-x(Dy)xPdBi show surface dominated relativistic carrier transport at low temperatures.