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Electrical effects of spin density wave quantization and magnetic domain walls in chromium

Nature volume 452, pages 859–863 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

The role of magnetic domains (and the walls between domains) in determining the electrical properties of ferromagnetic materials1 has been investigated in great detail for many years, not least because control over domains offers a means of manipulating electron spin to control charge transport in ‘spintronic’ devices2. In contrast, much less attention has been paid to the effects of domains and domain walls on the electrical properties of antiferromagnets: antiferromagnetic domains show no net external magnetic moment, and so are difficult to manipulate or probe. Here we describe electrical measurements on chromium—a simple metal and quintessential spin density wave antiferromagnet3—that show behaviour directly related to spin density wave formation and the presence of antiferromagnetic domains. Two types of thermal hysteresis are seen in both longitudinal and Hall resistivity: the first can be explained by the quantization of spin density waves due to the finite film thickness (confirmed by X-ray diffraction measurements) and the second by domain-wall scattering of electrons4,5. We also observe the striking influence of the electrical lead configuration (a mesoscopic effect) on the resistivity of macroscopic samples in the spin density wave state. Our results are potentially of practical importance, in that they reveal tunable electrical effects of film thickness and domain walls that are as large as the highest seen for ferromagnets6,7.

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Figure 1: Antiferromagnetic spin density wave due to Fermi surface nesting in chromium and its influence on the transport coefficients.
Figure 2: Thermal hysteresis below T N in the transport coefficients, thermal derivatives, and X-ray measurement of the charge density wave.
Figure 3: Thermal hysteresis of transport coefficients observed in the thinnest and thickest films, and schematic diagram of quantization of SDW.
Figure 4: Domain wall scattering due to Fermi surface mismatch.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Burke foundation for their generous support of the project, J. Karapetrova, Z. Islam and J. Lang at Argonne National Laboratory and M. Vaudin at NIST for assisting the X-ray measurements, and the Rockefeller Foundation for the Bellagio Residency where this manuscript was completed.

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Author notes

  1. Ravi K. Kummamuru

    Present address: Present address: Department of Material Science and Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois 61801, USA.,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire 03755, USA,

    Ravi K. Kummamuru & Yeong-Ah Soh

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Correspondence to Yeong-Ah Soh.

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This file contains Supplementary Methods describing additional details of the measurements and some calculations. (PDF 47 kb)

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Kummamuru, R., Soh, YA. Electrical effects of spin density wave quantization and magnetic domain walls in chromium. Nature 452, 859–863 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06826

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