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QUANTUM MATERIALS

Ferromagnetism in a topological semimetal

Nature Materials volume 17, pages 750–751 (2018)Cite this article

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The van der Waals material Fe3–xGeTe2 is shown to be a strong candidate for a ferromagnetic nodal-line semimetal with a very large anomalous Hall effect.

The anomalous Hall effect (AHE)1 — the Hall effect driven by magnetic order, rather than an external magnetic field — has been one of the central themes in condensed-matter science over the past century. Arguably, this longevity stems from the extremely rich theory of this phenomenon, which ties together the physics of spin–orbit coupling and (quantum) magnetism, and the mathematics of differential geometry and topology. In the past two to three decades the anomalous Hall effect has been firmly associated with the field of band topology in crystalline electronic systems. While prior work was mostly driven by the AHE in itinerant ferromagnets, recent attention has focused on the AHE in insulators, culminating in the discovery of the quantum anomalous Hall state in two-dimensional Cr-doped topological insulator BiSbTe films2. Now, writing in Nature Materials, Kyoo Kim and colleagues3 show that a van der Waals (vdW) semimetal Fe3–xGeTe2 has features pertinent to both concepts: it is a three-dimensional itinerant ferromagnet with strong ties to the two-dimensional quantum anomalous Hall state, possessing extremely large figures of merit associated with the AHE.

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Fig. 1: Berry curvature in a nodal-line semimetal.

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  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    D. A. Pesin

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  1. D. A. Pesin
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Correspondence to D. A. Pesin.

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Pesin, D.A. Ferromagnetism in a topological semimetal. Nature Mater 17, 750–751 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-018-0161-y

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