Abstract
The hallmark of materials science is the ability to tailor the microstructure of a given material to provide a desired response. Carbon mixed with iron provides the steel of buildings and bridges; impurities sprinkled in silicon single crystals form the raw materials of the electronics revolution; pinning centres in superconductors let them become powerful magnets. Here, we show that either adding a few parts per million of the proper chemical impurities to indium antimonide, a well-known semiconductor, or redesigning the material’s structure on the micrometre scale, can transform its response to an applied magnetic field. The former approach is purely quantum mechanical1,2,3; the latter a classical outgrowth of disorder4,5,6,7, turned to advantage. In both cases, the magnetoresistive response—at the heart of magnetic sensor technology—can be converted to a simple, large and linear function of field that does not saturate. Harnessing the effects of disorder has the further advantage of extending the useful applications range of such a magnetic sensor to very high temperatures by circumventing the usual limitations imposed by phonon scattering.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank M. M. Parish for valuable discussions on the Parish–Littlewood model. The work at the University of Chicago was supported by DOE Basic Energy Sciences.
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J.H. and T.F.R. contributed equally to all parts of the project.
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Hu, J., Rosenbaum, T. Classical and quantum routes to linear magnetoresistance. Nature Mater 7, 697–700 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2259
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2259
