Observation of Spin Splitting in Room-Temperature Metallic Antiferromagnet CrSb

TL;DR

This study combines ARPES and DFT to observe significant spin splitting in the metallic antiferromagnet CrSb at room temperature, highlighting its potential for spintronic applications.

Contribution

First experimental observation of large, anisotropic spin splitting in CrSb, a high-temperature metallic antiferromagnet, using ARPES and DFT.

Findings

Spin splitting up to 0.8 eV observed in CrSb.

Spin splitting is anisotropic and agrees with DFT calculations.

CrSb's high Néel temperature makes it promising for room-temperature spintronics.

Abstract

Recently, unconventional antiferromagnets that enable the splitting of electronic spins have been theoretically proposed and experimentally realized, where the magnetic sublattices containing moments pointing at different directions are connected by a novel set of symmetries. Such spin splitting (SS) is substantial, $k$-dependent, and independent of the spin-orbit coupling strength, making these magnets promising materials for antiferromagnetic spintronics. Here, combined with angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations, we perform a systematic study on CrSb, a metallic spin-split antiferromagnet candidate with $T_N$ = 703 K. Our data reveals the electronic structure of CrSb along both out-of-plane and in-plane momentum directions, which renders anisotropic $k$-dependent SS and agrees well with the calculational results. The magnitude of such SS reaches up to at least 0.8 eV at non-high-symmetry momentum points, which is significantly higher than the largest known SOC-induced SS. This compound expands the choice of materials in the field of antiferromagnetic spintronics and is likely to stimulate subsequent investigations of high-efficiency spintronic devices that are functional at room temperature.