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Pressure-induced Anderson-Mott transition in elemental tellurium

Published version
Peer-reviewed

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Authors

Fontes, MB 
Moutinho, M 
Baggio-Saitovitch, E 

Abstract

jats:titleAbstract</jats:title>jats:pElemental tellurium is a small band-gap semiconductor, which is always p-doped due to the natural occurrence of vacancies. Its chiral non-centrosymmetric structure, characterized by helical chains arranged in a triangular lattice, and the presence of a spin-polarized Fermi surface, render tellurium a promising candidate for future applications. Here, we use a theoretical framework, appropriate for describing the corrections to conductivity from quantum interference effects, to show that a high-quality tellurium single crystal undergoes a quantum phase transition at low temperatures from an Anderson insulator to a correlated disordered metal at around 17 kbar. Such insulator-to-metal transition manifests itself in all measured physical quantities and their critical exponents are consistent with a scenario in which a pressure-induced Lifshitz transition shifts the Fermi level below the mobility edge, paving the way for a genuine Anderson-Mott transition. We conclude that previously puzzling quantum oscillation and transport measurements might be explained by a possible Anderson-Mott ground state and the observed phase transition.</jats:p>

Description

Keywords

40 Engineering, 3403 Macromolecular and Materials Chemistry, 4016 Materials Engineering, 34 Chemical Sciences

Journal Title

Communications Materials

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2662-4443
2662-4443

Volume Title

2

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC