A team of researchers from the Ural Federal University (Ural Federal University) and the Ural Branch (Ural Branch) of the Russian Academy of Sciences discovered a variety of properties, from semimetallic and semiconductor to metallic, in new compounds based on antimony and gadolinium. This was reported by the UrFU press service on October 19.
The topological features that some of the new compounds turn out to possess often manifest themselves in gigantic magnetoresistance and anomalous electronic characteristics. All these unique properties make these materials promising for creating transistors, detectors, diodes, etc.
The Ural scientists presented the results of their study of the properties of these compounds in the article “Semimetallic, semimetallic, semiconductor and metallic states in Gd-Sb compounds”, published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
Employee of the Laboratory of Electronic and Nuclear Resonance of UrFU, Head of the Laboratory of Metal Optics of the Institute of Metal Physics that bears his name. MN Mikheeva Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexey Lukoyanov explained the problem that the researchers solved:
“To our knowledge, there have been no previous systematic studies on the electronic properties of antimony and gadolinium-based compounds, but they have a number of attractive properties for use in optoelectronic applications. For example, the semimetallic nature of the conductivity of antimony and rare earth metals is associated with a low concentration of current carriers in these compounds. And topological characteristics manifest themselves in the anomalous properties of materials. “In practice, these compounds are interesting for creating magnetically sensitive sensor elements for various purposes or, for example, photovoltaic or photoelectric devices.”.
Topological semimetals differ from ordinary semimetals in that the latter conduct electricity at both low and high temperatures. But in topological ones, electrical conductivity manifests itself differently.
“The intermetallic compounds based on antimony and gadolinium that we study have both semimetallic and semimetallic or metallic properties. In the latter case, high spin polarization values were obtained for the compound studied; This means that such a substance is capable of conducting spin current, which is necessary for the creation of quantum devices, as well as devices for recording and storing. data. However, to achieve this, there is still a lot of fundamental and applied work to be done.”– said Alexey Lukoyanov.
The scientists studied the physical properties of antimony and gadolinium-based compounds using an ab initio theoretical approach, that is, they used physical constants as input data in the calculation. This approach to modeling the structure and properties of materials allows for very precise results.
Source: Rossa Primavera
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