Emergent Polar Metal Phase in a Van der Waals Mott Magnet

Abstract: We report the emergence of a polar metal phase in layered van der Waals compound FePSe$_3$. This Mott insulator with antiferromagnetic order offers a unique opportunity to fully tune an insulator into a polar metal state with pressure, without doping-induced disorder or impurities. Our synchrotron and neutron diffraction data unambiguously show a structural transition and loss of the inversion symmetry. We also observed the suppression of magnetic ordering and an insulator-to-metal transition correspondent with this structural transformation. The loss of the inversion symmetry combined with the pressure-induced metallicity in FePSe$_3$ offers a new platform to investigate polar metallicity at accessible pressures. Moreover, the high-pressure metallic phase shows unconventional resistivity deviating from the Fermi-liquid description, close to the magnetic critical transition pressure at sufficiently low temperatures, which strongly suggests underlying quantum criticality. Our work not only explores the comprehensive temperature-pressure phase diagram of FePSe$_3$ but also provides insights for further investigation of van der Waals strongly correlated magnetic compounds.