Gate-tunable anomalous Hall effect in stacked van der Waals ferromagnetic insulator - topological insulator heterostructures

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that stacking van der Waals ferromagnetic insulators with topological insulators via dry transfer induces a tunable anomalous Hall effect, offering a new approach to realize topological phases like QAHI.

Contribution

It introduces a simple mechanical transfer method to create heterostructures that exhibit magnetic proximity effects in topological insulators, bypassing complex growth techniques.

Findings

Observation of anomalous Hall effect in heterostructures

Electrostatic gating modulates the AHE

Mechanical stacking enables magnetic proximity effect

Abstract

The search of novel topological phases, such as the quantum anomalous Hall insulator (QAHI) or the axion insulator, has motivated different schemes to introduce magnetism into topological insulators. One scheme is to introduce ferromagnetic dopants in topological insulators. However, it is generally challenging and requires carefully engineered growth/heterostructures or relatively low temperatures to observe the QAHI due to issues such as the added disorder with ferromagnetic dopants. Another promising scheme is using the magnetic proximity effect with a magnetic insulator to magnetize the topological insulator. Most of these heterostructures are synthesized so far by growth techniques such as molecular beam epitaxy and metallic organic chemical vapor deposition. These are not readily applicable to allow mixing and matching many of the available ferromagnetic and topological insulators due to difference in growth conditions and lattice mismatch. Here, we demonstrate that the magnetic proximity effect can still be obtained in stacked heterostructures assembled via the dry transfer of exfoliated micrometer-sized thin flakes of van der Waals topological insulator and magnetic insulator materials (BiSbTeSe2/Cr2Ge2Te6), as evidenced in the observation of an anomalous Hall effect (AHE). Furthermore, devices made from these heterostructures can allow modulation of the AHE when controlling the carrier density via electrostatic gating. These results show that simple mechanical transfer of magnetic van der Waals materials provides another possible avenue to magnetize topological insulators by magnetic proximity effect, a key step towards further realization of novel topological phases such as QAHI and axion insulators.