Linear and nonlinear magnetotransport in highly disordered Weyl semimetal
Phys. Rev. Materials 10, 014202 – Published 7 January, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/ws48-8b3p
Abstract
Breaking of the inversion symmetry of the crystal structure plays a crucial role in nonlinear responses. Although this concept should be invalid for amorphous materials, there are few experimental studies on nonlinear transport responses for highly disordered noncentrosymmetric materials. Here, we employ nonreciprocal magnetoresistance to trace the structural changes of low-symmetry with heavy-ion irradiation. The irradiated specimens were mostly amorphized and exhibited semimetallic transport with completely different carrier densities and mobilities from those of single crystals. We showed that the nonreciprocal magnetoresistance is remarkably suppressed in the irradiated samples. This suppression of nonlinear transport is attributed to the disordered atomic arrangement by amorphization rather than carrier doping effects by ion irradiation, corroborated by structural analysis using transmission electron microscopy and extended x-ray absorption fine structure analysis.