CrAlGe: An itinerant ferromagnet with strong tunability by heat treatment

We present a comprehensive investigation on CrAlGe and realize that it is an itinerant ferromagnet with strong tunability of the Curie temperature $T_{\rm C}$ and the spontaneous moment $\mu_0$ depending on annealing heat treatment. While the value of $T_{\rm C}$ was previously reported to be 80 K with $\mu_0\approx$ 0.41$\mu_{\rm B}$, in this work the two quantities attain values as high as 170 K and 0.66$\mu_{\rm B}$, respectively. Heat treatment does not cause changes of the lattice parameters and symmetry, but results in a slight narrowing of the Bragg peaks. The strong tunability of the itinerant ferromagnetism indicates significantly tunable hybridization between the Cr 3d electrons and the conduction bands, in agreement with the dominant Cr-Al/Ge bonds of this compound. Further tuning along the same line towards even stronger or weaker itinerant ferromagnetism promises an interesting follow-up to clarify the localized-itinerant duality of the 3d electrons in this compound.     

Electric and thermal transport properties of topological insulator candidate LiMgBi

We report the transport properties of a topological insulator candidate, LiMgBi. The electric resistivity of the title compound exhibits a metal-to-semiconductor-like transition at around 160 K and tends to saturation below 50 K. At low temperatures, the magnetoresistance is up to ~260% at 9 T and a clear weak antilocalization effect is observed in the low magnetic-field region. The Hall measurement reveals that LiMgBi is a multiband system, where hole-type carriers (n_h~10¹⁸ cm^-3) play a major role in the transport process. Remarkably, LiMgBi possess a large Seebeck coefficient (~440 μV/K) and a moderate thermal conductivity at room temperature, which indicate that LiMgBi is a promising candidate in thermoelectric applications.     

C-Type Antiferromagnetic Structure of Topological Semimetal CaMnSb2

<正>Determination of the magnetic structure and confirmation of the presence or absence of inversion (P) and time reversal (Τ) symmetry is imperative for correctly understanding the topological magnetic materials. Here highquality single crystals of the layered manganese pnictide CaMnSb₂ are synthesized using the self-flux method.