Condensed Matter Seminar

Transition metal dichalcogenides have long been known and explored. Due to their reduced dimensionality, such compounds sometimes display charge density wave (CDW) transitions or, upon doping with magnetic ions, often reveal dramatic changes of their physical properties. I will discuss the effects of transition metal intercalation on the properties of two layered
chalcogenide materials, TiSe2 and TaS2. Although TiSe2 is one of the first known CDW-bearing materials, the nature of its CDW transition remains controversial. Recently the interest in TiSe2 has been renewed by our discovery of the new superconducting state (SC) that emerges upon Cu doping. Thus CuxTiSe2 provides the first example of a system in which controlled chemical doping can be used to study the competition between the CDW and SC. I will also discuss experiments on FexTaS2 aimed at studying the sharp switching of the magnetization that we recently observed in this compound for x = 1/4. For this particular Fe content, FexTaS2 orders ferromagnetically below 160 K and displays very sharp hysteresis loops in the ordered state for H||c. The corresponding magnetoresistance is negative, and qualitatively reproduces the features observed in the M(H) data, by showing a sharp drop around the critical field for moment reversal.