Anisotropic magnetotransport and extremely large magnetoresistance in NbAs2 single crystals

We report the extremely large magnetoresistance and anisotropic magnetoresistance in a non-magnetic semimetallic NbAs2 single crystal. Unsaturated transverse XMR with quadratic field dependence has been observed to be ~3 × 105 % at 2 K and 15 T. Up to 12.5 K, clear Shubnikov de Haas (SdH) quantum oscillations were observed from which two distinct Fermi pockets were identified. The corresponding quantum electronic parameters such as effective cyclotron mass and Dingle temperature were obtained using Lifshitz-Kosevich formula. From the field dependent Hall resistivity at 2 K, carrier concentrations n e (n h ) = 6.7691 (6.4352) × 1025 m−3 and mobilities μ e (μ h ) = 5.6676 (7.6947) m2 V−1 s−1 for electrons (e) and holes (h) were extracted using semiclassical two-band model fitting. We observed large anisotropic magnetoresistance about 84%, 75%, and 12% at 0.75 T and 6 K for three different orientations γ, θ and ϕ, respectively, similar to that in several topological semimetallic systems. Magnetic properties of NbAs2 are similar to the case of graphite, without any phase transition in the temperature range from 5 K to 300 K.