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Piezomagnetic switching of the anomalous Hall effect in an antiferromagnet at room temperature

Nature Physics volume 18, pages 1086–1093 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Piezomagnetism couples strain linearly to magnetic order, implying that it can produce and control magnetization. However, unlike magnetostriction, which couples magnetization quadratically to strain, it enables bidirectional control of a net magnetic moment. If this effect becomes large at room temperature, it may be technologically relevant, similar to its electric analogue, piezoelectricity. However, current studies of the piezomagnetic effect have been primarily restricted to antiferromagnetic insulators at cryogenic temperatures. Here we report the observation of large piezomagnetism in the antiferromagnetic Weyl semimetal Mn3Sn at room temperature. This material is known for its nearly magnetization-free anomalous Hall effect. We find that a small uniaxial strain on the order of 0.1% can control both the sign and size of the anomalous Hall effect. Our experiment and theory show that the piezomagnetism can control the anomalous Hall effect, which will be useful for spintronics applications.

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Fig. 1: The 120° antichiral magnetic structure of Mn3Sn and piezomagnetic control of the magnetization M and the divergence of its direction from the order parameter K.
Fig. 2: The piezomagnetic effect in the topological antiferromagnet Mn3Sn under in-plane uniaxial compression.
Fig. 3: The AHE of the Weyl antiferromagnet Mn3Sn and its sign reversal under in-plane uniaxial strain.
Fig. 4: Distinct strain controls of the Hall vector K under a magnetic field in the ferrohalic, parahallic and diahallic regimes.

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Data availability

Source data are provided with this paper. All other data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Code availability

The codes that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available on GitHub (https://github.com/SayakD-hub/Mn_3_X_Hall).

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Acknowledgements

The work at the Institute for Quantum Matter, an Energy Frontier Research Center, was funded by the DOE Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences under award no. DE-SC0019331. This work was partially supported by JST-Mirai Program (JPMJMI20A1), JST-CREST (JPMJCR18T3), JST-PRESTO (JPMJPR20L7), Japan Science and Technology Agency, Grants-in-Aids for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (15H05882, 15H05883 and 15K21732) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan, and Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (19H00650). S.N. acknowledges support from the CIFAR as a Fellow of the CIFAR Quantum Materials Research Program. The use of the facilities of the Materials Design and Characterization Laboratory at the Institute for Solid State Physics, The University of Tokyo, as well as the Cryogenic Research Center, The University of Tokyo, is gratefully acknowledged. M.I. is supported by a JSPS Research Fellowship for Young Scientists (DC1). S.D. is supported by funding from the Max Planck-UBC-UTokyo Center for Quantum Materials, the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, Quantum Materials and Future Technologies Program, and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI grant no. JP19H01808. C.W.H. acknowledges support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through SFB 1143 (project ID 247310070) and the Max Planck Society. The identification of any commercial product or tradename does not imply endorsement or recommendation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: M. Ikhlas, S. Dasgupta.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    M. Ikhlas, T. Higo & S. Nakatsuji

  2. Institute for Solid State Physics, The University of Tokyo, Chiba, Japan

    M. Ikhlas, S. Dasgupta, T. Higo & S. Nakatsuji

  3. CREST, Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Saitama, Japan

    M. Ikhlas, T. Higo & S. Nakatsuji

  4. Department of Physics and Astronomy and Stewart Blusson Quantum Matter Institute, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    S. Dasgupta

  5. Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    F. Theuss & B. J. Ramshaw

  6. Department of Physics, Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan

    Shunichiro Kittaka

  7. Institute for Quantum Matter and William H. Miller III Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    O. Tchernyshyov & S. Nakatsuji

  8. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    C. W. Hicks

  9. Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden, Germany

    C. W. Hicks

  10. Trans-scale Quantum Science Institute, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    S. Nakatsuji

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Contributions

S.N. and O.T. conceived the project. S.N., B.J.R. and C.W.H. planned and supervised the experiments. M.I. synthesized and prepared the samples. M.I. and T.H. performed the transport measurements under uniaxial strain and the magnetization measurements under uniaxial stress. M.I. performed the finite element simulations. F.T. and B.J.R. conducted the resonant ultrasound spectroscopy measurements. S.K. developed the piston–cylinder-type pressure cell. C.W.H. developed the uniaxial strain cell. S.D. and O.T. developed the Landau theory, and S.D. performed the numerical calculations. M.I., S.D., S.N. and O.T. wrote the manuscript with comments from F.T. and C.W.H. All authors read and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to S. Nakatsuji.

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Nature Physics thanks Cheng Song and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1

(a) M(H) curves of Sample M2 at T = 300K for various y-axis stress. (b) M(T) curves of Sample M2 under μ0Hy = 1T for various stress along y-axis, taken on cooling from 300 K. (c) M(H) curves of Sample M2 at T = 300K for various stress along x-axis. (d) M(T) curves of Sample M2 under μ0Hx = 1 T for various stress along x-axis, taken on cooling from 300 K. TH ≈ 271 K is the incommensurate transition temperature for Sample M2. ((e, f)) M(H) curves of Sample M1(M3) at T = 300 K for various stress along x(y)-axis.

Source data

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–11, discussion and Tables 1 and 2.

Source Data Fig. 2

Field and temperature dependence of magnetization under uniaxial stress.

Source Data Fig. 3

Hall resistivity data for various strains, fields and temperatures.

Source Data Fig. 4

Numerically calculated values of Hall vector for various fields and strain parameters.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 1

Magnetization data for various stress, fields and temperatures.

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Ikhlas, M., Dasgupta, S., Theuss, F. et al. Piezomagnetic switching of the anomalous Hall effect in an antiferromagnet at room temperature. Nat. Phys. 18, 1086–1093 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01645-5

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