Antiferromagnetic Chern insulator with large charge gap in heavy transition-metal compounds

Abstract

Abstract Despite the discovery of multiple intrinsic magnetic topological insulators in recent years the observation of Chern insulators is still restricted to very low temperatures due to the negligible charge gaps. Here, we uncover the potential of heavy transition-metal compounds for realizing a collinear antiferromagnetic Chern insulator (AFCI) with a charge gap as large as 300 meV. Our analysis relies on the Kane-Mele-Kondo model with a ferromagnetic Hund coupling $$J_{{\textrm{H}}}$$ J H between the spins of itinerant electrons and the localized spins of size S. We show that a spin-orbit coupling $$\lambda _{{\textrm{SO}}} \gtrsim 0.03t$$ λ SO ≳ 0.03 t , where t is the nearest-neighbor hopping element, is already large enough to stabilize an AFCI provided the alternating sublattice potential $$\delta$$ δ is in the range $$\delta \approx SJ_{{\textrm{H}}}$$ δ ≈ S J H . We establish a remarkable increase in the charge gap upon increasing $$\lambda _{{\textrm{SO}}}$$ λ SO in the AFCI phase. Using our results we explain the collinear AFCI recently found in monolayers of CrO and MoO with charge gaps of 1 and $$50\,\hbox {meV}$$ 50 meV , respectively. In addition, we propose bilayers of heavy transition-metal oxides of perovskite structure as candidates to realize a room-temperature AFCI if grown along the [111] direction and subjected to a perpendicular electric field.