Tunable quantum anomalous Hall effects in ferromagnetic van der Waals heterostructures

Feng Xue; Yusheng Hou; Zhe Wang; Zhiming Xu; Ke He; Ruqian Wu; Yong Xu; Wenhui Duan

doi:10.1093/nsr/nwad151

Tunable quantum anomalous Hall effects in ferromagnetic van der Waals heterostructures

Natl Sci Rev. 2023 May 25;11(3):nwad151. doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwad151. eCollection 2024 Mar.

Authors

Feng Xue^{1

2}, Yusheng Hou³, Zhe Wang⁴, Zhiming Xu², Ke He^{1

2

5}, Ruqian Wu⁶, Yong Xu^{2

5

7

8}, Wenhui Duan^{1

2

5

9}

Affiliations

¹ Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences, Beijing 100193, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Quantum Physics, Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
³ Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Magnetoelectric Physics and Devices, Center for Neutron Science and Technology, School of Physics, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics, Key Laboratory of Computational Physical Sciences, and Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China.
⁵ Frontier Science Center for Quantum Information, Beijing 100084, China.
⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California-Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, USA.
⁷ Tencent Quantum Laboratory, Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd, Shenzhen 518057, China.
⁸ RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS), Wako, 351-0198, Japan.
⁹ Institute for Advanced Study, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.

Abstract

The quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE) has unique advantages in topotronic applications, but it is still challenging to realize the QAHE with tunable magnetic and topological properties for building functional devices. Through systematic first-principles calculations, we predict that the in-plane magnetization induced QAHE with Chern numbers C = ±1 and the out-of-plane magnetization induced QAHE with high Chern numbers C = ±3 can be realized in a single material candidate, which is composed of van der Waals (vdW) coupled Bi and MnBi₂Te₄ monolayers. The switching between different phases of QAHE can be controlled in multiple ways, such as applying strain or (weak) magnetic field or twisting the vdW materials. The prediction of an experimentally available material system hosting robust, highly tunable QAHE will stimulate great research interest in the field. Our work opens a new avenue for the realization of tunable QAHE and provides a practical material platform for the development of topological electronics.

Keywords: high Chern number; quantum anomalous Hall effect; topological quantum phase transition; tunable Chern number; van der Waals heterostructures.