Spin-reorientation driven topological Hall effect in Fe4GeTe2

Abstract

Iron-based van der Waals (vdW) ferromagnets with relatively high ordering temperatures are a current research focus due to their significance in fundamental physics and potential applications in spintronics. Competing magnetic interactions and anisotropies can give rise to nontrivial spin textures in these materials, resulting in novel topological features. Fe4GeTe2 (F4GT) is a nearly room-temperature vdW ferromagnet, well known for hosting a spin-reorientation transition (SRT) arising from the interplay of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) and shape anisotropy. In this work, we investigate the angle-dependent magneto-transport properties of F4GT single crystals. We report a large topological Hall effect (THE) in a multi-layer F4GT originating from the SRT-driven non-coplanar spin textures. The THE appears at the in-plane orientation of the external magnetic field and persists over a wide range of temperatures around SRT. Additionally, we find a thickness-sensitive THE signal for the c axis orientation of the magnetic field at a low-temperature regime which is associated with a reentrant Lifshitz transition.