Physical Review Research (Jun 2021)

Stable humplike Hall effect and noncoplanar spin textures in SrRuO_{3} ultrathin films

  • Byungmin Sohn,
  • Bongju Kim,
  • Se Young Park,
  • Hwan Young Choi,
  • Jae Young Moon,
  • Taeyang Choi,
  • Young Jai Choi,
  • Hua Zhou,
  • Jun Woo Choi,
  • Alessandro Bombardi,
  • Dan. G. Porter,
  • Seo Hyoung Chang,
  • Jung Hoon Han,
  • Changyoung Kim

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.023232
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 3, no. 2
p. 023232

Abstract

Read online Read online

We observed a humplike feature in Hall effects of SrRuO_{3} ultrathin films, and systematically investigated it by controlling thicknesses, temperatures and magnetic fields. The humplike feature is extremely stable, even surviving as a magnetic field is tilted by as much as 85^{∘}. Based on the atomic-level structural analysis of a SrRuO_{3} ultrathin film with a theoretical calculation, we reveal that atomic rumplings at the thin-film surface enhance Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, which can generate stable chiral spin textures and a humplike Hall effect. Moreover, temperature dependent resonant x-ray measurements at the Ru L edge under a magnetic field showed that the intensity modulation of unexpected peaks was correlated with the hump region in the Hall effect. We verify that the two-dimensional property of ultrathin films generates stable noncoplanar spin textures having a magnetic order in a ferromagnetic oxide material.