Giant magnetoresistance and band structure of topological semimetal RhSb3

Recently materials with skutterudite structure such as CoSb3 were predicted to provide a promising platform for the realization of new topological materials such as topological insulators and Dirac-Weyl semimetals. Here we report a detailed study of the electronic structure and magnetotransport properties of high quality RhSb3 single crystals. First-principles electronic structure calculations reveal a highly dispersive band with Sb-p and Rh-3d weight that shows apparent band inversion. Inclusion of spin-orbit coupling leaves the Fermi level pinned to a doublet, indicating a topological semimetal. Our synthesized high-quality single crystals show typical metallic behavior but with very small residual resistivity ratio, a sign of semimetal behavior, in zero field. We will present magnetotrasport data that exhibits a very large magnetoresistance that hints of a very sensitive evolution of electronic properties and Dirac-like spectrum.