Gate-tunable giant negative magnetoresistance in tellurene driven by quantum geometry

Nature Communications, 17, 5783 (2026)

Marcello B. Silva Neto, Chang Niu, Marcus V. O. Moutinho, Pierpaolo Fontana, Claudio Iacovelli, Victor Velasco, Caio Lewenkopf & Peide D. Ye

This work, conducted under the leadership Prof. Marcello B. Silva Neto from UFRJ, reveals a new origin for giant negative magnetoresistance in two-dimensional quantum materials. Its motivation is to understand why certain topological systems exhibit a strong reduction in electrical resistance under magnetic fields, beyond conventional mechanisms such as weak localization, chiral anomaly, or disorder. The authors studied tellurene films in gate-tunable Hall-bar devices, combining high-field magnetotransport, angular field rotation, temperature and carrier-density dependence, as well as theoretical modeling based on DFT and k⋅p theory. The main result is the observation of a gate-tunable giant negative magnetoresistance reaching −90% of the zero-field resistance, associated with the proximity of a Weyl node in the conduction band. The effect is attributed to the quantum geometry of the electronic wavefunctions and to a newly proposed magnetoelectric Drift-Zeeman interaction.

Correspondence: mbsn@if.ufrj.br