Magnetic materials with kagome crystal structure exhibit rich physics such as frustrated magnetism, skyrmion formation, topological flat bands, and Dirac/Weyl points. Until recently, most studies on kagome magnets have been performed on bulk crystals or polycrystalline films. Here we report the atomic layer molecular beam epitaxy synthesis of high-quality thin films of topological kagome magnet Fe3Sn2. Structural and magnetic characterization of Fe3Sn2 on epitaxial Pt(111) identifies highly ordered films with c-plane orientation and an in-plane magnetic easy axis. Studies of the local magnetic structure by anomalous Nernst effect imaging reveals in-plane oriented micrometer size domains. Superlattice structures consisting of Fe3Sn2 and Fe3Sn are also synthesized by atomic layer molecular beam epitaxy, demonstrating the ability to modulate the sample structure at the atomic level. The realization of high-quality films by atomic layer molecular beam epitaxy opens the door to explore the rich physics of this system and investigate novel spintronic phenomena by interfacing Fe3Sn2 with other materials.
@article{arxiv.2203.08092,
title = {Atomic Layer Epitaxy of Kagome Magnet Fe${_3}$Sn${_2}$ and Sn-modulated Heterostructures},
author = {Shuyu Cheng and Igor Lyalin and Alexander J. Bishop and Roland K. Kawakami and Binbin Wang and Núria Bagués and David W. McComb},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.08092},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
8 pages, 5 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2105.12203