Millimeter-sized MnBi2Te4 single crystals are grown out of a BiTe flux and characterized using magnetic, transport, scanning tunneling microscopy, and spectroscopy measurements. The magnetic structure of MnBi2Te4 below TN is determined by powder and single-crystal neutron diffraction measurements. Below TN = 24 K, Mn2+ moments order ferromagnetically in the ab plane but antiferromagnetically along the crystallographic c axis. The ordered moment is 4.04(13)μB/Mn at 10 K and aligned along the crystallographic c axis in an A-type antiferromagnetic order. Below TN, the electrical resistivity drops upon cooling or when going across the metamagnetic transition in increasing magnetic fields. A critical scattering effect is observed in the vicinity of TN in the temperature dependence of thermal conductivity, indicating strong spin-lattice coupling in this compound. However, no anomaly is observed in the temperature dependence of thermopower around TN. Fine tuning of the magnetism and/or electronic band structure is needed for the proposed topological properties of this compound. The growth protocol reported in this work might be applied to grow high-quality crystals where the electronic band structure and magnetism can be finely tuned by chemical substitutions.

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A nematic topological superconductor has an order parameter symmetry, which spontaneously breaks the crystalline symmetry in its superconducting state. This state can be observed, for example, by thermodynamic or upper critical field experiments in which a magnetic field is rotated with respect to the crystalline axes. The corresponding physical quantity then directly reflects the symmetry of the order parameter. We present a study on the superconducting upper critical field of the Nb-doped topological insulator Nb x Bi 2 Se 3 for various magnetic field orientations parallel and perpendicular to the basal plane of the Bi 2 Se 3 layers. The data were obtained by two complementary experimental techniques, magnetoresistance and DC magnetization, on three different single crystalline samples of the same batch. Both methods and all samples show with perfect agreement that the in-plane upper critical fields clearly demonstrate a two-fold symmetry that breaks the three-fold crystal symmetry. The two-fold symmetry is also found in the absolute value of the magnetization of the initial zero-field-cooled branch of the hysteresis loop and in the value of the thermodynamic contribution above the irreversibility field, but also in the irreversible properties such as the value of the characteristic irreversibility field and in the width of the hysteresis loop. This provides strong experimental evidence that Nb-doped Bi 2 Se 3 is a nematic topological superconductor similar to the Cu-and Sr-doped Bi 2 Se 3 .

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