Cadmium arsenide (Cd 3 As 2) hosts massless Dirac electrons in its ambient-condition tetragonal phase. We report x-ray diffraction and electrical resistivity measurements of Cd 3 As 2 upon cycling pressure beyond the critical pressure of the tetragonal phase and back to ambient conditions. We find that, at room temperature, the transition between the low-and high-pressure phases results in large microstrain and reduced crystallite size, both on rising and falling pressure. This leads to nonreversible electronic properties, including self-doping associated with defects and a reduction of the electron mobility by an order of magnitude due to increased scattering. This paper indicates that the structural transformation is sluggish and shows a sizable hysteresis of over 1 GPa. Therefore, we conclude that the transition is first-order reconstructive, with chemical bonds being broken and rearranged in the high-pressure phase. Using the diffraction measurements, we demonstrate that annealing at ∼200 • C greatly improves the crystallinity of the high-pressure phase. We show that its Bragg peaks can be indexed as a primitive orthorhombic lattice with a HP ≈ 8.68 Å, b HP ≈ 17.15 Å, and c HP ≈ 18.58 Å. The diffraction study indicates that, during the structural transformation, a new phase with another primitive orthorhombic structure may also be stabilized by deviatoric stress, providing an additional venue for tuning the unconventional electronic states in Cd 3 As 2 .
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