The metal-insulator transition in ZrTe5 induced by temperature
Wei Wang,
Xiaoqian Zhang,
Yafei Zhao,
Huanfeng Xu,
QiangSheng Lu,
Chang Liu,
Xiaoying Hu,
Ion Cristian Edmond Turcu,
Liang He,
Wenqin Zou,
Yongbing Xu
Affiliations
Wei Wang
Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Photonic and Electronic Materials, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, People’s Republic of China
Xiaoqian Zhang
Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Photonic and Electronic Materials, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, People’s Republic of China
Yafei Zhao
Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Photonic and Electronic Materials, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, People’s Republic of China
Huanfeng Xu
Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Photonic and Electronic Materials, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, People’s Republic of China
QiangSheng Lu
Department of Physics Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518055, China
Chang Liu
Department of Physics Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518055, China
Xiaoying Hu
College of Science and Laboratory of Materials Design and Quantum Simulation, Changchun University, ChangChun 130022, China
Ion Cristian Edmond Turcu
Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Photonic and Electronic Materials, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, People’s Republic of China
Liang He
Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Photonic and Electronic Materials, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, People’s Republic of China
Wenqin Zou
National Lab of Solid State Microstructures, Department of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, PR China
Yongbing Xu
Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Photonic and Electronic Materials, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, People’s Republic of China
The ZrTe5 is known as a high mobility thermoelectric material. In 2014, Weng et al. predicted theoretically that the monolayer ZrTe5 is also a 2D topological insulator. In early works, scientists were focused on the abnormal metal-insulator transition as the temperature decreases. However, the physics nature of this phenomenon is still under debate. Here we have explained this by temperature-induced swapping of the dominating carriers from holes to electrons, evidenced by magneto-transport and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) measurements on single crystal ZrTe5 samples. Both methods indicate that the Fermi level of ZrTe5 raises from the top of the valance band across the conduction band as the temperature decreases. This is also accompanied by changes of the lattice constants. Our first principle calculation suggests that the shift of the Fermi level comes from the band structure change caused by the temperature variation.
