Anisotropic and High-Mobility Electronic Transport in a Quasi 2D Antiferromagnet NdSb2

Abstract

Advancements in low-dimensional functional device technology heavily rely on the discovery of suitable materials which have interesting physical properties as well as can be exfoliated down to the 2D limit. Exfoliable high-mobility magnets are one such class of materials that, not due to lack of effort, has been limited to only a handful of options. So far, most of the attention has been focused on the van der Waals (vdW) systems. However, even within the non-vdW, layered materials, it is possible to find all these desirable features. Using chemical reasoning, it is found that NdSb2 is an ideal example. Even with a relatively small interlayer distance, this material can be exfoliated down to few layers. NdSb2 has an antiferromagnetic ground state with a quasi 2D spin arrangement. The bulk crystals show a very large, non-saturating magnetoresistance along with highly anisotropic electronic transport properties. It is confirmed that this anisotropy originates from the 2D Fermi pockets which also imply a rather quasi 2D confinement of the charge carrier density. Both electron and hole-type carriers show very high mobilities. The possible non-collinear spin arrangement also results in an anomalous Hall effect.