Antiferromagnetic hexagonal MnTe is a promising material for spintronic devices relying on the control of antiferromagnetic domain orientations. Here we report on neutron diffraction, magnetotransport, and magnetometry experiments on semiconducting epitaxial MnTe thin films together with density functional theory (DFT) calculations of the magnetic anisotropies. The easy axes of the magnetic moments within the hexagonal basal plane are determined to be along ⟨11ˉ00⟩ directions. The spin-flop transition and concomitant repopulation of domains in strong magnetic fields is observed. Using epitaxially induced strain the onset of the spin-flop transition changes from ∼2~T to ∼0.5~T for films grown on InP and SrF2 substrates, respectively.
@article{arxiv.1710.08523,
title = {Magnetic anisotropy in antiferromagnetic hexagonal MnTe},
author = {D. Kriegner and H. Reichlova and J. Grenzer and W. Schmidt and E. Ressouche and J. Godinho and T. Wagner and S. Y. Martin and A. B. Shick and V. V. Volobuev and G. Springholz and V. Holý and J. Wunderlich and T. Jungwirth and K. Výborný},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.08523},
year = {2018}
}