Abstract

I will present results of a magnetotransport study on single crystals of the quasi-one-dimensional molybdenum oxide Li0.9Mo6O17 that is perhaps the most the highly anisotropic metallic compound known to exist. Li0.9Mo6O17 is metallic at room temperature, semiconducting below a temperature Tmin = 25 K, and in clean crystals becomes superconducting below Tc = 1.8 K. Applying a sufficiently large magnetic field in all orientations in the insulating state below Tmin gives rise to a large negative magnetoresistance that is most pronounced when the field is aligned along the most conductive direction. In this orientation, a magnetic field above 24T is enough to completely suppress the low temperature insulating state, that leads to a recovery of the metallic state before, at the highest fields (45T), onset to a possible superconducting state at 10K. This onset critical temperature is almost an order of magnitude higher than ever previously reported for this material in zero field.