Electric Transport of Nodal Line Semimetals in Single-Component Molecular Conductors

Abstract

We examine an effect of acoustic phonon scattering on the electric conductivity of a single-component molecular conductor [Pd(dddt)2] (dddt = 5,6-dihydro-1,4-dithiin-2,3-dithiolate) with a half-filled band by applying the previous calculation in a two-dimensional model with Dirac cone [Phys. Rev. B. 98, 161205 (2018)], wherethe electric transport by the impurity scattering exhibits a noticeable interplay of the Dirac cone and the phonon scattering, resulting in maximum of the conductivity with increasing temperature. The conductor shows a nodal line semimetal, where the band crossing of HOMO (Highest Occupied Molecular Orbital) and LUMO (Lowest Unoccupied Molecular Orbital) provides a loop of Dirac points located close to the Fermi energy followed by the density of states (DOS) similar to that of a two-dimensional Dirac cone. Using a tight-binding (TB) model [arXiv:2008.09277], which was obtained using the crystal structure observed from a recent X ray diffraction experiment under pressure, it is shown that the obtained conductivity explains reasonably the anomalous behavior in [Pd(dddt)2] exhibiting temperature-independent resistivity at finite temperatures. This paper demonstrates a crucial role of the acoustic phonon scattering at finite temperatures in the electric conductivity of Dirac electrons. The present theoretical results of conductivity are compared with those of the experiments.

Keywords

• nodal line semimetal
• single-component molecular conductor
• conductivity
• DOS
• tight-binding model