Facile and fast growth of high mobility nanoribbons of ZrTe5*

Recently, ZrTe(5)has received a lot of attention as it exhibits various topological phases, such as weak and strong topological insulators, a Dirac semimetal, a three-dimensional quantum Hall state, and a quantum spin Hall insulator in the monolayer limit. While most of studies have been focused on the three-dimensional bulk material, it is highly desired to obtain nanostructured materials due to their advantages in device applications. We report the synthesis and characterizations of ZrTe(5)nanoribbons. Via a silicon-assisted chemical vapor transport method, long nanoribbons with thickness as thin as 20 nm can be grown. The growth rate is over an order of magnitude faster than the previous method for the bulk crystals. Moreover, transport studies show that the nanoribbons are of low unintentional doping and high carrier mobility, over 30000 cm(2)/V.s, which enable reliable determination of the Berry phase of pi in theacplane from quantum oscillations. Our method holds great potential in growth of high quality ultra-thin nanostructures of ZrTe5.