Weak Kondo effect in the monocrystalline transition metal dichalcogenide <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:mi>Zr</mml:mi><mml:msub><mml:mi>Te</mml:mi><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:math>
Yihao Wang, Changzheng Xie, Junbo Li, Zan Du, Liang Cao, Yuyan Han, Lin Zu, Hongchao Zhang, Huamin Zhu, Xueying Zhang, Yimin Xiong, Weisheng Zhao
Abstract
Zr-Te compounds are an ideal platform to investigate novel electrical transport properties. Here we report the Kondo effect in single-crystalline ${\mathrm{ZrTe}}_{2}$. When $T<8$ K, ${\mathrm{ZrTe}}_{2}$ exhibits a $\mathrm{log}T$ dependence of resistivity, which may derive from three different mechanisms, including electron-electron interaction, weak localization, and Kondo effect. By measuring transport properties with magnetic field along different directions, the former two mechanisms were excluded. Isotropic negative magnetoresistance was extracted by subtracting different quadratic background signals caused by Lorentz force, which reveals the existence of a weak Kondo effect in this material.