Switchable anomalous Hall effects in polar-stacked 2D antiferromagnet MnBi2Te4

Abstract

Van der Waals (vdW) assembly allows controlling symmetry of two-dimensional (2D) materials that determines their physical properties. Especially interesting is the recently demonstrated breaking inversion symmetry by polar layer stacking to realize novel electronic, magnetic, and transport properties of 2D vdW materials switchable by induced electric polarization. Here, based on symmetry analyses and density-functional calculations, we explore the emergence of the anomalous Hall effect (AHE) in antiferromagnetic MnBi2Te4 films assembled by polar layer stacking. We demonstrate that breaking PT symmetry in an MnBi2Te4 bilayer makes this 2D material magnetoelectric and produces a spontaneous AHE switchable by electric polarization. We find that reversable polarization at one of the interfaces in a three-layer MnBi2Te4 film drives a metal-insulator transition, as well as switching between an AHE and quantum AHE (QAHE). Finally, we predict that engineering an interlayer polarization in a three-layer MnBi2Te4 film allows converting MnBi2Te4 from a trivial insulator to a Chern insulator. Overall, our work emphasizes the emergence of quantum-transport phenomena in 2D vdW antiferromagnets by polar layer stacking, which do not exist in this material in the bulk or bulk-like thin-film forms.

References in corpus (6)

• Engineering symmetry breaking in two-dimensional layered materials
• Layer Hall effect in a 2D topological Axion antiferromagnet
• Direct observation of geometric and sliding ferroelectricity in an amphidynamic crystal
• Anomalous Hall Conductivity of a Non-Collinear Magnetic Antiperovskite
• Layer Hall effect induced by hidden Berry curvature in antiferromagnetic insulators
• Routes to realize the axion-insulator phase in MnBi${}_2$Te${}_4$(Bi${}_2$Te${}_3$)${}_n$ family: a perspective

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Stacking-dependent ferroicity of reversed bilayer: altermagnetism or ferroelectricity
• Spin-Polarized Antiferromagnetic Spintronics
• Spontaneous Anomalous Hall Effect in Two-Dimensional Altermagnets
• Observation of the Axion quasiparticle in 2D MnBi${}_2$Te${}_4$
• Magnetic Antiskyrmions in Two-Dimensional van der Waals Magnets Engineered by Layer Stacking
• Stacking-dependent Electronic and Topological Properties in van der Waals Antiferromagnet MnBi${}_2$Te${}_4$ Films
• Ferroelectric Antiferromagnetic Lifting of Spin-Valley Degeneracy
• Switchable in-plane anomalous Hall effect by magnetization orientation in monolayer ${\mathrm{Mn}}_3{\mathrm{Si}}_2{\mathrm{Te}}_6$
• Ferroelectrically Switchable Half-Quantized Hall Effect
• High-Chern-number Quantum anomalous Hall insulators in mixing-stacked MnBi${}_2$Te${}_4$ thin films
• Simple model for the gap in the surface states of the antiferromagnetic topological insulator MnBi${}_2$Te${}_4$