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Thermoelectric materials enables the harvest of waste heat and directly conversion into electricity. In search of high efficient thermoelectric materials, low thermal conductivity of a material is essential and critical. Here, we have theoretically investigated the lattice thermal conductivity and thermoelectric properties of layered intermetallic Na$_2$MgSn and Na$_2$MgPb based on the density functional theory and linearized Boltzmann equation with the single-mode relaxation-time approximation. It is found that both materials exhibit very low and anisotropic intrinsic lattice thermal conductivity. Despite of the very low mass density and simple crystal structure of Na$_2$MgSn, its lattice thermal conductivities along $a$ and $c$ axes are only 1.75 and 0.80 W/m$\cdot$K respectively at room temperatures. When Sn is replaced by the heavier element Pb, its lattice thermal conductivities decrease remarkably to 0.51 and 0.31 W/m$\cdot$K respectively along $a$ and $c$ axes at room temperatures. We show that the low lattice thermal conductivities of both materials are mainly due to their very short phonon lifetimes, which are roughly between 0.4 to 4.5 ps. Combined with previous experimental measurements, the metallic Na$_2$MgPb can not be a good thermoelectric material. However, we predict that the semiconducting Na$_2$MgSn is a potential room-temperature thermoelectric material with a considerable $ZT$ of 0.34 at 300 K. Our calculations not only imply that the intermetallic Na$_2$MgSn is a potential thermoelectric material, but also can motivate more theoretical and experimental works on the thermoelectric researches in simple layered intermetallic compounds.

Chiral magnetic effect is a quantum phenomenon that is breaking of chiral symmetry of relativistic Weyl fermions by quantum fluctuation under paralleled electric field E and magnetic field B. Intuitively, Weyl fermions with different chirality, under stimulus of paralleled E and B, will have different chemical potential that gives rise to an extra current, whose role likes a chiral battery in solids. However, up to now, the experimental evidence for chiral magnetic effect is the negative longitudinal magnetoresistance rather than a chiral electric source. Here, totally different from previous reports, we observed the giant chiral magnetic effect evidenced by: 'negative' resistivity and corresponding voltage-current curves lying the second-fourth quadrant in type-II Weyl semimetal WP$_{2+\delta}$ under following conditions: the misaligned angle between E and B is smaller than 20$^\circ$, temperature <30 K and externally applied E<50 mA. Phenomenologically, based on macroscopic Chern-Simon-Maxwell equation, the giant chiral magnetic effect observed in WP$_{2+\delta}$ is attributed to two-order higher coherent time of chiral Weyl-fermion quantum state over Drude transport relaxation-time. This work demonstrates the giant chiral-magnetic/chiral-battery effect in Weyl semimetals.

ZrTe$_5$ and HfTe$_5$ have attracted increasingly attention recently since the theoretical prediction of being topological insulators (TIs). However, subsequent works show many contradictions about their topological nature.Three possible phases, i.e. strong TI, weak TI, and Dirac semi-metal, have been observed in different experiments until now. Essentially whether ZrTe$_5$ or HfTe$_5$ has a band gap or not is still a question. Here, we present detailed first-principles calculations on the electronic and topological properties of ZrTe$_5$ and HfTe$_5$ on variant volumes and clearly demonstrate the topological phase transition from a strong TI, going through an intermediate Dirac semi-metal phase, then to a weak TI when the crystal expands.Our work might give a unified explain about the divergent experimental results and propose the crucial clue to further experiments to elucidate the topological nature of these materials., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

The asymmetric electron dispersion in type-II Weyl semimetal theoretically hosts anisotropic transport properties. Here we observe the significant anisotropic Adler-Bell-Jackiw (ABJ) anomaly in the Fermi-level delicately adjusted WTe$_{1.98}$ crystals. Quantitatively, $C_w$ , a coefficient representing intensity of ABJ anomaly, along a- and b-axis of WTe$_{1.98}$ are 0.030 and 0.051 T$^{-2}$ at 2 K, respectively. We found that temperature-sensitive ABJ anomaly is attributed to topological phase transition from type-II Weyl semimetal to trivial semimetal, which is verified by first-principles calculation using experimentally determined lattice parameters at different temperatures. Theoretical electrical transport study reveals that observation of ansotropic ABJ both along a- and b-axis in WTe$_{1.98}$ is attributed to electrical transport in the quasi-classical regime. Our work may suggest that electron-doped WTe$_2$ is an ideal playground to explore the novel properties in type-II Weyl semimetals., Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, 1 table

Recently, the extremely large magnetoresistance observed in transition metal telluride, like WTe$_2$, attracted much attention because of the potential applications in magnetic sensor. Here we report the observation of extremely large magnetoresistance as 3.0$\times$10$^4$ % measured at 2 K and 9 T magnetic field aligned along [001]-ZrSiS. The significant magnetoresistance change (~1.4$\times$10$^4$ %) can be obtained when the magnetic field is titled from [001] to [011]-ZrSiS. These abnormal magnetoresistance behaviors in ZrSiS can be understood by electron-hole compensation and the open orbital of Fermi surface. Because of these superior MR properties, ZrSiS may be used in the novel magnetic sensors., Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, 21 references

Quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) phase is a two-dimensional bulk ferromagnetic insulator with a nonzero Chern number in presence of spin-orbit coupling (SOC) but absence of applied magnetic fields. Associated metallic chiral edge states host dissipationless current transport in electronic devices. This intriguing QAH phase has recently been observed in magnetic impurity-doped topological insulators, {\it albeit}, at extremely low temperatures. Based on first-principles density functional calculations, here we predict that layered rhodium oxide K$_{0.5}$RhO$_2$ in noncoplanar chiral antiferromagnetic state is an unconventional three-dimensional QAH insulator with a large band gap and a Neel temperature of a few tens Kelvins. Furthermore, this unconventional QAH phase is revealed to be the exotic quantum topological Hall effect caused by nonzero scalar spin chirality due to the topological spin structure in the system and without the need of net magnetization and SOC., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

We report an atomic-scale characterization of ZrTe$_5$ by using scanning tunneling microscopy. We observe a bulk bandgap of ~80 meV with topological edge states at the step edge, and thus demonstrate ZrTe$_5$ is a two dimensional topological insulator. It is also found that an applied magnetic field induces energetic splitting and spatial separation of the topological edge states, which can be attributed to a strong link between the topological edge states and bulk topology. The perfect surface steps and relatively large bandgap make ZrTe$_5$ be a potential candidate for future fundamental studies and device applications., Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures

Orthorhombic SrIrO3 is a typical spin-orbit-coupling correlated metal that shows diversified physical properties under the external stimuli. Here nonlinear Hall effect and weakly temperature-dependent resistance are observed in a SrIrO3 film epitaxially grown on SrTiO3 substrate. It infers that orthorhombic SrIrO3 is a semimetal oxide. However, linear Hall effect and insensitive-temperature-dependent resistance are observed in SrIrO3 films grown on (La,Sr)(Al,Ta)O3 (LSAT) substrates, suggesting a tunable semimetallic state due to band structure change in SrIrO3 films under different compressive strain. The mechanism of this evolution is explored in detail through strain-state analysis by reciprocal space mapping and electron diffraction, carrier density and mobility calculations, as well as electronic band structure evolution under compressive strain (predicted by tight-binding approximation). It might suggest that the strain-induced band shift leads to the semimetallic tuning in the SrIrO3 film grown on from SrTiO3 to LSAT substrates. Our findings illustrate the tunability of SrIrO3 properties and pave the way to induce novel physical states in SrIrO3 such as the proposed topological insulator state in heterostructures., Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures, submitted to PRB

Spin orbit coupling plays a non-perturbation effect in many recently developed novel fields including topological insulators and spin-orbit assistant Mott insulators. In this paper, strongly temperature-dependent spin orbit coupling, revealed by weak anti-localization, is observed at low temperature in 5d strongly correlated compound, SrIrO3. As the temperature rising, increase rate of Rashba coefficient is nearly 30%-45%/K. The increase is nearly 100 times over that observed in semiconductor heterostructures. Microscopically, the large increase of Rashba coefficient is attributed to the significant evolution of effective Land\'e g factor on temperature, whose mechanism is discussed. Sensitively temperature-dependent spin orbit coupling in SrIrO3 might be applied in spintronic devices, Comment: 8 pages 5 figures