Prediction of High Temperature Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect in Two Dimensional Transition-Metal Oxides

TL;DR

This paper predicts that a two-dimensional V2O3 monolayer with a honeycomb-Kagome structure can exhibit a quantum anomalous Hall effect with a large band gap and high Curie temperature, potentially enabling room-temperature applications.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel 2D V2O3 material as a QAH insulator with a large band gap and high Curie temperature, combining first-principles calculations and effective Hamiltonian analysis.

Findings

V2O3 monolayer exhibits a non-zero Chern number.

Large band gap (>0.1 eV) due to electron correlation and spin-orbit coupling.

High Curie temperature (~900 K) predicted for the material.

Abstract

Quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) insulator is a topological phase which exhibits chiral edge states in the absence of magnetic field. The celebrated Haldane model is the first example of QAH effect, but difficult to realize. Here, we predict the two-dimensional single-atomic-layer V2O3 with a honeycomb-Kagome structure is a QAH insulator with a large band gap (large than 0.1 eV) and a high ferromagnetic Curie temperature (about 900 K). Combining the first-principle calculations with the effective Hamiltonian analysis, we find that the spin-majority dxy and dyz orbitals of V atoms on the honeycomb lattice form a massless Dirac cone near the Fermi level which becomes massive when the on-site spin-orbit coupling is included. Interestingly, we find that the large band gap is caused by a cooperative effect of electron correlation and spin-orbit coupling. Both first-principle calculations and the effective Hamiltonian analysis confirm that 2D V2O3 has a non-zero Chern number (i.e., one). Our work paves a new direction towards realizing the QAH effect at room temperature.