We report large magnetoresistance (MR) at low temperatures in single-crystalline nonmagnetic compounds TaAs2 and NbAs2. Both compounds exhibit parabolic-field-dependent MR larger than 5×103 in a magnetic field of 9 Tesla at 2 K. The MR starts to deviate from parabolic dependence above 10 T and intends to be saturated in 45 T for TaAs2 at 4.2 K. The Hall resistance measurements and band structural calculations reveal their compensated semimetal characteristics. The large MR at low temperatures is ascribed to a resonance effect of the balanced electrons and holes with large mobilities. We also discuss the relation of the MR and samples' quality for TaAs2 and other semimetals. We found that the magnitudes of MR are strongly dependent on the samples' quality for different compounds.
@article{arxiv.1601.06482,
title = {Large Magnetoresistance in Compensated Semimetals TaAs$_2$ and NbAs$_2$},
author = {Zhujun Yuan and Hong Lu and Yongjie Liu and Junfeng Wang and Shuang Jia},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1601.06482},
year = {2016}
}