No Arabic abstract
We systematically investigate the influence of high pressure on the electronic transport properties of layered ferromagnetic materials, in particular, those of Fe$_3$GeTe$_2$. Its crystal sustains a hexagonal phase under high pressures up to 25.9 GPa, while the Curie temperature decreases monotonously with the increasing pressure. By applying appropriate pressures, the experimentally measured anomalous Hall conductivity, $sigma_{xy}^A$, can be efficiently controlled. Our theoretical study reveals that this finding can be attributed to the shift of the spin--orbit-coupling-induced splitting bands of Fe atoms. With loading compression, $sigma_{xy}^A$ reaches its maximal value when the Fermi level lies inside the splitting bands and then attenuates when the splitting bands float above the Fermi level. Further compression leads to a prominent suppression of the magnetic moment, which is another physical cause of the decrease in $sigma_{xy}^A$ at high pressure. These results indicate that the application of pressure is an effective approach in controlling the anomalous Hall conductivity of layered magnetic materials, which elucidates the physical mechanism of the large intrinsic anomalous Hall effect.
Anomalous Nernst effect, a result of charge current driven by temperature gradient, provides a probe of the topological nature of materials due to its sensitivity to the Berry curvature near the Fermi level. Fe3GeTe2, one important member of the recently discovered two-dimensional van der Waals magnetic materials, offers a unique platform for anomalous Nernst effect because of its metallic and topological nature. Here, we report the observation of large anomalous Nernst effect in Fe3GeTe2. The anomalous Hall angle and anomalous Nernst angle are about 0.07 and 0.09 respectively, far larger than those in common ferromagnets. By utilizing the Mott relation, these large angles indicate a large Berry curvature near the Fermi level, consistent with the recent proposal for Fe3GeTe2 as a topological nodal line semimetal candidate. Our work provides evidence of Fe3GeTe2 as a topological ferromagnet, and demonstrates the feasibility of using two-dimensional magnetic materials and their band topology for spin caloritronics applications.
The electronic anomalous Hall effect (AHE), where charge carriers acquire a velocity component orthogonal to an applied electric field, is one of the most fundamental and widely studied phenomena in physics. There are several different AHE mechanisms known, and material examples are highly sought after, however in the highly conductive (skew scattering) regime the focus has centered around ferromagnetic metals. Here we report the observation of a giant extrinsic AHE in KV$_3$Sb$_5$, an exfoliable, Dirac semimetal with a Kagome layer of Vanadium atoms. Although there has been no reports of magnetic ordering down to 0.25 K, the anomalous Hall conductivity (AHC) reaches $approx$ 15,507 $Omega^{-1}$cm$^{-1}$ with an anomalous Hall ratio (AHR) of $approx$ 1.8$ %$; an order of magnitude larger than Fe. Defying expectations from skew scattering theory, KV$_3$Sb$_5$ shows an enhanced skew scattering effect that scales quadratically, not linearly, with the longitudinal conductivity ($sigma_{xx}$), opening the possibility of reaching an anomalous Hall angle (AHA) of 90$^{circ}$ in metals; an effect thought reserved for quantum anomalous Hall insulators. This observation raises fundamental questions about the AHE and opens a new frontier for AHE (and correspondingly SHE) exploration, stimulating investigation in a new direction of materials, including metallic geometrically frustrated magnets, spin-liquid candidates, and cluster magnets.
Using symmetry analysis and density functional theory calculations, we uncover the nature of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in Fe$_3$GeTe$_2$ monolayer. We show that while such an interaction might result in small distortion of the magnetic texture on the short range, on the longrange Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction favors in-plane Neel spin-spirals along equivalent directions of the crystal structure. Whereas our results show that the observed Neel skyrmions cannot be explained by the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction at the monolayer level, they suggest that canted magnetic texture shall arise at the boundary of Fe$_3$GeTe$_2$ nanoflakes or nanoribbons and, most interestingly, that homochiral planar magnetic textures could be stabilized.
Non-monotonic dependence of anomalous Hall resistivity on temperature and magnetization, including a sign change, was observed in Fe/Gd bilayers. To understand the intriguing observations, we fabricated the Fe/Gd bilayers and single layers of Fe and Gd simultaneously. The temperature and field dependences of longitudinal resistivity, Hall resistivity and magnetization in these films have also been carefully measured. The analysis of these data reveals that these intriguing features are due to the opposite signs of Hall resistivity/or spin polarization and different Curie temperatures of Fe and Gd single-layer films.
We investigated the evolution of ferromagnetism in layered Fe$_3$GeTe$_2$ flakes under different pressures and temperatures using in situ magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) spectroscopy. We found that the rectangle shape of hysteretic loop under an out-of-plane magnetic field sweep can sustain below 7 GPa. Above that pressure, an intermediate state appears at low temperature region signaled by an 8-shaped skew hysteretic loop. Meanwhile, the coercive field and Curie temperature decrease with increasing pressures, implying the decrease of the exchange interaction and the magneto-crystalline anisotropy under pressures. The intermediate phase has a labyrinthine domain structure, which is attributed to the increase of ratio of exchange interaction to magneto-crystalline anisotropy based on Jaglas theory. Moreover, our calculation results reveal a weak structural transition around 6 GPa, which leads to a drop of the magnetic momentum of Fe ions.