Oleksandr Pylypovskyi^1*, Sophie Weber^2*, Pavlo Makushko^1*, Igor Veremchuk^1*, Nicola Spaldin^2*, Denys Makarov^1*

1 Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf e.V., Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research, 01328 Dresden, Germany

2 Materials Theory, ETH Zurich, Wolfgang-Pauli-Strasse 27, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland

* Corresponding authors emails: o.pylypovskyi@hzdr.de, Sophie.weber@mat.ethz.ch, p.makushko@hzdr.de, I.veremchuk@hzdr.de, nicola.spaldin@mat.ethz.ch, d.makarov@hzdr.de

DOI10.24435/materialscloud:v6-5y [version v1]

Publication date: Nov 29, 2023

How to cite this record

Oleksandr Pylypovskyi, Sophie Weber, Pavlo Makushko, Igor Veremchuk, Nicola Spaldin, Denys Makarov, Surface-symmetry-driven Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and canted ferrimagnetism in collinear magnetoelectric antiferromagnet Cr₂O₃, Materials Cloud Archive 2023.183 (2023), https://doi.org/10.24435/materialscloud:v6-5y

Description

Antiferromagnets are normally thought of as materials with compensated magnetic sublattices. This adds to their technological advantages but complicates readout of the antiferromagnetic state. We demonstrate theoretically the existence of a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) which is determined by the magnetic symmetry classes of Cr₂O₃ surfaces with an in-plane magnetic easy axis. The DMI explains a previously predicted out-of-plane magnetization at the nominally compensated surfaces of chromia, leading to a surface-localized canted ferrimagnetism. This is in agreement with magnetotransport measurements and with density functional theory predictions which further allow us to quantify the strength of DMI. The temperature dependence of the transversal resistance for these planes shows distinct behavior in comparison with that of the Cr₂O₃ plane, which we attribute to the influence of DMI. Our work provides a framework to analyze surface-driven phenomena in antiferromagnets, and motivates the use of nominally compensated chromia surfaces for antiferomagnetic spintronics and magnonics. Here, we provide the data for density functional theory and Monte Carlo calculations. Micromagnetic and experimental data for this joint experiment-theory collaboration are archived separately according to EU regulations.

Materials Cloud sections using this data

Files

File name	Size	Description
aplane_2ndlayercant.tar MD5md5:ebcc6314e3b9b0c3b127681bf04a189c	92.2 MiB	input and relevant output files for determining canting angle of the second layer for the chromia a-plane. The chromium moments in the first layer are held fixed at the energetic minima of 0.25 degrees
aplane_LxMz.tar MD5md5:b516c96175cee85a945bee3e961e1e66	143.6 MiB	input and output files for calculating energy as a function of canting-induced magnetization along z when Neel vector is along x (the a-plane surface normal) for the a-plane. These are used in the preprint to numerically estimate the D_{zx} contribution the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction at the a-plane.
aplane_LzMx.tar MD5md5:7dc3198bbd6a5047aa42c4d1e35c5696	382.2 MiB	input and output files for calculating energy as a function of canting-induced magnetization along x when Neel vector is along z (the bulk ground-state Neel-vector directionl) for the a-plane. These are used in the preprint to numerically estimate the D_{xz} contribution the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction at the a-plane.
aplane_ytilt.tar MD5md5:8378485a8ff9fdd9dded3c8dc475b011	119.1 MiB	input and output files for calculating energy as a function of canting-induced magnetization along in-plane direction y when Neel vector is along z (the bulk ground-state Neel vector direction) for the a-plane.
montecarlo_mplane.tar MD5md5:d7072151faeffbb2264983aa57ccc3ad	40.0 KiB	Basic input files in the directory "Base" along with the script runme.sh which modifies the Base files and sets up multiple Monte Carlo calculations with varying temperature values. The mvec*.txt files contain the output data required to reproduce the plot of sublattice magnetization versus temperature in the supplementary material.
mplane_2ndlayercant.tar MD5md5:16d6988cfdb4ccb3c42b127dd27ce09d	31.6 MiB	input and relevant output files for determining canting angle of the second layer for the chromia m-plane. The chromium moments in the first layer are held fixed at -0.75 degrees
mplane_3rdlayercant.tar MD5md5:747dee0b7adc1f3f143ab75d9bca6896	83.2 MiB	input and relevant output files for determining canting angle of the third layer for the chromia m-plane. The chromium moments in the first layer are held fixed at -0.75 degrees and -0.5 degrees in the second layer.
mplane_LxMz.tar MD5md5:bf6233f7a38dc73e1155752aab4859b5	126.7 MiB	input and output files for calculating energy as a function of canting-induced magnetization along z when Neel vector is along x (the m-plane surface normal) for the m-plane. These are used in the preprint to numerically estimate the D_{zx} contribution the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction at the m-plane.
mplane_LzMx.tar MD5md5:104d84fd96fa69a0970c6f735fc1ef45	215.5 MiB	input and output files for calculating energy as a function of canting-induced magnetization along x when Neel vector is along z (the bulk ground-state Neel-vector directionl) for the m-plane. These are used in the preprint to numerically estimate the D_{xz} contribution the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction at the m-plane.
mplane_ytilt.tar MD5md5:223f86ba71bf59983864dbd3e0f62a54	57.7 MiB	input and output files for calculating energy as a function of canting-induced magnetization along in-plane direction y when Neel vector is along z (the bulk ground-state Neel vector direction) for the amplane.
README.txt MD5md5:83fd3c59bb47540e6aea2575facd52ed	3.2 KiB	README

License

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External references

Keywords

magnetoelectrics surface magnetization density-functional theory Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions micromagnetics magnetotransport