Room-Temperature Nonsaturating Magnetoresistance Of Intrinsic Bulk Silicon In High Pulsed Magnetic Fields

Nonsaturating positive magnetoresistance (MR) of intrinsic bulk silicon (i-Si) was observed at forward bias, exhibiting an almost linear behavior at high magnetic fields (5 T < B < 40 T). The MR reaches 180% at 40 T at room temperature using a bias of 1.5 V, and there is no indication that this MR would saturate at even stronger fields. The nonsaturating large MR of i-Si supports experimentally the hypothesis that the MR of silicon may be induced by inhomogeneous current flows. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3569139]