Coupling Between Magnetic and Transport Properties in Magnetic Layered Material Mn2-xZnxSb

TL;DR

This study investigates how magnetic and electronic transport properties in Mn2-xZnxSb single crystals are affected by temperature and zinc composition, revealing tunable magnetic phases and a transition from metallic to insulating behavior.

Contribution

It reports the synthesis and characterization of Mn2-xZnxSb, discovering two distinct magnetic and electronic regimes separated by a critical Zn concentration, highlighting the material's potential for studying spin-charge-lattice coupling.

Findings

Zn-free samples are metallic with resistivity jumps at magnetic transition

Zn-rich samples exhibit metal-to-insulator transition-like behavior

Magnetic and electronic properties are tunable by Zn composition and temperature

Abstract

We synthesized single crystals for Mn2-xZnxSb and studied their magnetic and electronic transport properties. This material system displays rich magnetic phase tunable with temperature and Zn composition. In addition, two groups of distinct magnetic and electronic properties, separated by a critical Zn composition of x = 0.6, are discovered. The Zn-less samples are metallic and characterized by a resistivity jump at the magnetic ordering temperature, while the Zn-rich samples lose metallicity and show a metal-to-insulator transition-like feature tunable by magnetic field. Our findings establish Mn2-xZnxSb as a promising material platform that offers opportunities to study how the coupling of spin, charge, and lattice degrees of freedom governs interesting transport properties in 2D magnets, which is currently a topic of broad interest.