Temperature-dependent Magnetoresistance in Platinum Metalattice

Metalattices are artificial 3D solids periodic on a scale of 1-100nm [1]. Their structure can be viewed as meta-atoms (filled voids) connected by meta-bonds (thin channels interconnecting meta-atoms). Metalattices of platinum inverse opal fabricated by infiltrating a template assembled from silica nanospheres with diameters less than 100nm are studied in this work. The infiltration is realized by high-pressure confined chemical fluid deposition (HPcCFD), a technique capable of filling pores of diameters from a few nm to ~100nm without leaving voids over many millimeters of length. As the lattice constants are comparable to the characteristic length scales of many important physical processes – for instance, electron (in)elastic mean free paths, new 3D mesoscopic electronic phenomena may arise. We carried out magneto-electric transport measurements down to 2K on a ~1μm thick platinum metalattice. The temperature dependence of magnetoresistance was found to evolve systematically for both high and low magnetic field. Its relationship to the nanometer-scale, 3D structural ordering of metalattices will be discussed.

[1] Han, J. E.; Crespi, V. H. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2001, 86, 696-699