Raman Signatures of Broken Inversion Symmetry and In-Plane Anisotropy in Type-II Weyl Semimetal Candidate TaIrTe<sub>4</sub>.

Liu, Yinan; Gu, Qiangqiang; Peng, Yu; Qi, Shaomian; Zhang, Na; Zhang, Yinong; Ma, Xiumei; Zhu, Rui et al. · Adv Mater · 2018

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

The layered ternary compound TaIrTe<sub>4</sub> is an important candidate to host the recently predicted type-II Weyl fermions. However, a direct and definitive proof of the absence of inversion symmetry in this material, a prerequisite for the existence of Weyl Fermions, has so far remained evasive. Herein, an unambiguous identification of the broken inversion symmetry in TaIrTe<sub>4</sub> is established using angle-resolved polarized Raman spectroscopy. Combining with high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, an efficient and nondestructive recipe to determine the exact crystallographic orientation of TaIrTe<sub>4</sub> crystals is demonstrated. Such technique could be extended to the fast identification and characterization of other type-II Weyl fermions candidates. A surprisingly strong in-plane electrical anisotropy in TaIrTe<sub>4</sub> thin flakes is also revealed, up to 200% at 10 K, which is the strongest known electrical anisotropy for materials with comparable carrier density, notably in such good metals as copper and silver.