| The transverse, positive magnetoresistance of suitably doped silver chalcogenides and indium antimonides changes linearly with magnetic field by thousands of percent, with no sign of saturation up to MegaGauss. A precise characterization of these unexpected observations has led to two very different, yet equally interesting magnetotransport mechanisms: the classical inhomogeneity-induced current jetting, and quantum linear magnetoresistance. The inhomogeneous distribution of excess/deficient silver atoms lies behind the anomalous magnetoresistive response of silver chalcogenides, introducing spatial conductivity fluctuations with length scales independent of the cyclotron radius. We show that a systematic investigation of the resistivity tensor in longitudinal field could be used to identify the spatial inhomogeneities and determine the associated length scale of the current distortion. By contrast, the linear magnetoresistance observed in single-crystalline InSb presents a spectacular manifestation of magnetotransport in the extreme quantum limit, when only one Landau band is partially filled. Harnessing both the classical and quantum effects opens the gate to artificial fabrication of conducting networks with micron scale unit size for enhanced magnetoresistive sensitivity. |
