We report electrical transport measurements on CaMn2Bi2 single crystals under applied pressure. At ambient pressure and high temperatures, CaMn2Bi2 behaves as a single-band semimetal hosting N\'{e}el order at TN=150~K. At low temperatures, multi-band behavior emerges along with an activated behavior typical of degenerate semiconductors. The activation gap is estimated to be Δ∼20~K. Applied pressure not only favors the antiferromagnetic order at a rate of 0.40(2)~K/kbar, but also enhances the activation gap at 20~kbar by about 70~\%. This gap enhancement is typical of correlated narrow-gap semiconductors such as FeSi and Ce3Bi4Pt3, and places CaMn2Bi2 as a Mn-based hybridization-gap semiconductor candidate. \textit{Ab initio} calculations based on the density functional theory are shown to be insufficient to describe the ground state of CaMn2Bi2.
@article{arxiv.1907.09984,
title = {Putative hybridization gap in CaMn$_{2}$Bi$_{2}$ under applied pressure},
author = {M. M. Piva and S. M. Thomas and Z. Fisk and J. -X. Zhu and J. D. Thompson and P. G. Pagliuso and P. F. S. Rosa},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1907.09984},
year = {2019}
}