Recent studies have dealt with the electronic and magnetic ground state properties of the tetraboride material MnB4. So far, however, the ground state properties could not be established unambiguously. Therefore, here we present an experimental study on single-crystalline MnB4 by means of resistivity and magnetization measurements. For this, we have developed a sample holder that allows four-point ac resistivity measurements on these very small (∼\,100\,μm) samples. With our data we establish that the electronic ground state of MnB4 is intrinsically that of a pseudo-gap system, in agreement with recent band structure calculations. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the material does neither show magnetic order nor a behavior arising from the vicinity to a magnetically ordered state, this way disproving previous claims.
@article{arxiv.1606.05484,
title = {Electronic ground state of MnB$_{4}$},
author = {N. Steinki and J. L. Winter and D. Schulze Grachtrup and D. Menzel and S. Süllow and A. Knappschneider and B. Albert},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.05484},
year = {2016}
}