Room-Temperature Anomalous Hall Effect in Graphene in Interfacial Magnetic Proximity with EuO Grown by Topotactic Reduction

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that EuO thin films can be grown on graphene via topotactic reduction, inducing a high-temperature anomalous Hall effect due to proximity-induced spin polarization, with potential for room-temperature spintronic applications.

Contribution

It introduces a method to create EuO/graphene heterostructures with high-temperature magnetic properties and anomalous Hall effect, highlighting the role of strain and magnetic polarons in stabilizing ferromagnetism.

Findings

EuO films exhibit ferromagnetism with a Curie temperature decreasing with Eu2O3 thickness.

The EuO/graphene heterostructure shows an anomalous Hall effect persisting up to 350K.

High strain stabilizes magnetic polarons, enabling high-temperature magnetic behavior.

Abstract

We show that thin layers of EuO, a ferromagnetic insulator, can be achieved by topotactic reduction under titanium of a Eu2O3 film deposited on top of a graphene template. The reduction process leads to the formation of a 7-nm thick EuO smooth layer, without noticeable structural changes in the underlying chemical vapor deposited (CVD) graphene. The obtained EuO films exhibit ferromagnetism, with a Curie temperature that decreases with the initially deposited Eu2O3 layer thickness. By adjusting the thickness of the Eu2O3 layer below 7 nm, we promote the formation of EuO at the very graphene interface: the EuO/graphene heterostructure demonstrates the anomalous Hall effect (AHE), which is a fingerprint of proximity-induced spin polarization in graphene. The AHE signal moreover persists above Tc up to 350K due to a robust super-paramagnetic phase in EuO. This original high-temperature magnetic phase is attributed to magnetic polarons in EuO: we propose that the high strain in our EuO films grown on graphene stabilizes the magnetic polarons up to room temperature. This effect is different from the case of bulk EuO in which polarons vanish in the vicinity of the Curie temperature Tc= 69K.