Vacancy-induced suppression of CDW order and its impact on magnetic order in kagome antiferromagnet FeGe

TL;DR

This study reveals how annealing-induced vacancies in FeGe kagome antiferromagnet suppress or induce charge density wave order, significantly affecting its magnetic and electronic properties, and demonstrating tunable CDW and magnetic states.

Contribution

It uncovers the microscopic mechanism by which annealing controls CDW and magnetic order in FeGe, highlighting the role of germanium vacancies and phase segregation.

Findings

560°C annealing creates Ge vacancies that suppress CDW.

320°C annealing induces long-range CDW with phase segregation.

CDW presence influences Hall effect and magnetic order.

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) kagome lattice metals are interesting because they display flat electronic bands, Dirac points, Van Hove singularities, and can have interplay between charge density wave (CDW), magnetic order, and superconductivity. In kagome lattice antiferromagnet FeGe, a short-range CDW order was found deep within an antiferromagnetically ordered state, interacting with the magnetic order. Surprisingly, post-growth annealing of FeGe at 560$^{\circ}$C can suppress the CDW order while annealing at 320$^{\circ}$C induces a long-range CDW order, with the ability to cycle between the states repeatedly by annealing. Here we perform transport, neutron scattering, scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), and muon spin rotation ($\mu$SR) experiments to unveil the microscopic mechanism of the annealing process and its impact on magneto-transport, CDW, and magnetic properties of FeGe. We find that 560$^{\circ}$C annealing creates germanium vacancies uniformly distributed throughout the FeGe kagome lattice, which prevent the formation of Ge-Ge dimers necessary for the CDW order. Upon annealing at 320$^{\circ}$C, the system segregates into stoichiometric FeGe regions with long-range CDW order and regions with stacking faults that act as nucleation sites for the CDW. The presence or absence of CDW order greatly affects the anomalous Hall effect, incommensurate magnetic order, and spin-lattice coupling in FeGe, thus placing FeGe as the only known kagome lattice material with a tunable CDW and magnetic order, potentially useful for sensing and information transmission.