Interface engineering of the anomalous Hall effect in Ni-based heterostructures

TL;DR

This study combines experimental and theoretical methods to show that interfacial effects, especially inversion-symmetry breaking and Rashba spin-orbit interaction, can be used to control the anomalous Hall effect in Ni-based heterostructures at room temperature.

Contribution

It reveals that substrate-induced interfacial effects, rather than strain alone, govern the anomalous Hall effect and demonstrates electric field tuning of this property.

Findings

Anomalous Hall conductivity varies with substrate-induced strain.

Interfacial inversion-symmetry breaking is key to the effect.

Electric field can continuously tune the anomalous Hall conductivity.

Abstract

Using a combined experimental and first-principles theoretical approach, we demonstrate interface engineering of the anomalous Hall effect in Ni-based epitaxial thin-film heterostructures. Ferromagnetic Ni thin films are grown on (001)-oriented single-crystal LaAlO$_3$, SrTiO$_3$, and MgO substrates, which impose different biaxial tensile strains of 0.3%, 0.6%, and 0.8%, respectively. Our room-temperature Hall transport measurements reveal a pronounced substrate-dependent modulation of the anomalous Hall conductivity. Interestingly, our calculations show that strain alone cannot account for the experimentally observed trends. Instead, we identify interfacial inversion-symmetry breaking, which induces Rashba spin-orbit interaction, as the key mechanism governing the anomalous Hall conductivity across different interfaces. Building on this understanding, we further demonstrate both theoretically and experimentally that the anomalous Hall conductivity can be continuously tuned by an external electric field. These findings establish the critical role of substrate-induced interfacial effects in controlling the anomalous Hall effect in engineered heterostructures and provide a viable pathway toward electrically tunable room-temperature spintronic devices.