Epitaxial growth of high quality Mn3Sn thin films by pulsed laser deposition

Abstract

Noncollinear antiferromagnet Weyl semimetal Mn3Sn has recently attracted great research interest. Although large anomalous Hall effect (AHE), anomalous Nernst effect (ANE), and magneto-optical effect have been observed in Mn3Sn, most studies are based on single crystals. So far, it is still challenging to grow high quality epitaxial Mn3Sn thin films with transport and optical properties comparable to their single crystal counterparts. Here, we report the structure and magneto-optical and transport properties of epitaxial Mn3Sn thin films fabricated by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). Highly oriented Mn3+xSn1−x (0001) and (112¯0) epitaxial films are growth on single crystalline Al2O3 and MgO substrates. Large anomalous Hall effect up to ΔρH=3.02 μΩ cm and longitudinal magneto-optical Kerr effect with |θK| = 38.1 mdeg at 633 nm wavelength are measured at 300 K, which are comparable to Mn3Sn single crystals. Our work demonstrates that high quality Mn3Sn epitaxial thin films can be fabricated by PLD, paving the way for future device applications.