Lifshitz transition mediated electronic transport anomaly in bulk ZrTe5

Zirconium pentatelluride ZrTe5, a fascinating topological material platform, hosts exotic chiral fermions in its highly anisotropic three-dimensional Dirac band and holds great promise advancing the next-generation information technology. However, the origin underlying its anomalous resistivity peak has been under debate for decades. Here we provide transport evidence substantiating the anomaly to be a direct manifestation of a Lifshitz transition in the Dirac band with an ultrahigh carrier mobility exceeding 3 × 105 cm2 V−1 s−1. We demonstrate that the Lifshitz transition is readily controllable by means of carrier doping, which sets the anomaly peak temperature Tp. Tp is found to scale approximately as n H 0.27 , where the Hall carrier concentration nH is linked with the Fermi level by F ∝ n H 1 3 in a linearly dispersed Dirac band. This relation indicates Tp monotonically increases with F, which serves as an effective knob for fine tuning transport properties in pentatelluride-based Dirac semimetals.