- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review B

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Editors' Suggestion
  • Open Access

Quench switching of Mn2As

Kamil Olejník1, Zdeněk Kašpar1,2, Jan Zubáč1,2, Sjoerd Telkamp3, Andrej Farkaš1,2, Dominik Kriegner1, Karel Výborný1, Jakub Železný1, Zbyněk Šobáň1 et al.

Peng Zeng4, Tomáš Jungwirth1, Vít Novák1, and Filip Krizek1,*

  • *Contact author: krizekfi@fzu.cz
PDF

Phys. Rev. B 112, 144401 – Published 1 October, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/1c81-tnzw

Abstract

We demonstrate that epitaxial thin film antiferromagnet Mn2As exhibits the quench-switching effect, which was previously reported only in crystallographically similar antiferromagnetic CuMnAs thin films. Quench switching in Mn2As shows a stronger increase in resistivity, reaching hundreds of percent at 5 K, and significantly longer retention time of the metastable high-resistive state before relaxation towards the low-resistive uniform magnetic state. Qualitatively, Mn2As and CuMnAs show analogous parametric dependence of the magnitude and relaxation of the quench-switching signal. Quantitatively, relaxation dynamics in both materials show direct proportionality to the Néel temperature. This confirms that the quench switching has a magnetic origin in both materials. The presented results suggest that the antiferromagnets crystalizing in the Cu2Sb structure are well suited for exploring and exploiting the intriguing physics of highly nonuniform magnetic states associated with the quench switching.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

Supplemental Material

References (32)

  1. T. Jungwirth, X. Marti, P. Wadley, and J. Wunderlich, Antiferromagnetic spintronics, Nat. Nanotechnol. 11, 231 (2016).
  2. V. Baltz, A. Manchon, M. Tsoi, T. Moriyama, T. Ono, and Y. Tserkovnyak, Antiferromagnetic spintronics, Rev. Mod. Phys. 90, 015005 (2018).
  3. D. Xiong, Y. Jiang, K. Shi, A. Du, Y. Yao, Z. Guo, D. Zhu, K. Cao, S. Peng, W. Cai et al., Antiferromagnetic spintronics: An overview and outlook, Fundam. Res. 2, 522 (2022).
  4. H. Chen, L. Liu, X. Zhou, Z. Meng, X. Wang, Z. Duan, G. Zhao, H. Yan, P. Qin, and Z. Liu, Emerging antiferromagnets for spintronics, Adv. Mater. 36, 2310379 (2024).
  5. X. Marti, I. Fina, C. Frontera, J. Liu, P. Wadley, Q. He, R. Paull, J. Clarkson, J. Kudrnovský, I. Turek et al., Room-temperature antiferromagnetic memory resistor, Nat. Mater. 13, 367 (2014).
  6. P. Wadley, B. Howells, J. Železný, C. Andrews, V. Hills, R. P. Campion, V. Novák, K. Olejník, F. Maccherozzi, S. Dhesi et al., Electrical switching of an antiferromagnet, Science 351, 587 (2016).
  7. J. Han, Y. Wang, F. Pan, and C. Song, Spin-Hall-effect-assisted electroresistance in antiferromagnets via 105A/cm2 dc current, Sci. Rep. 6, 31966 (2016).
  8. J. Godinho, H. Reichlová, D. Kriegner, V. Novák, K. Olejník, Z. Kašpar, Z. Šobáň, P. Wadley, R. P. Campion, R. M. Otxoa, P. E. Roy, J. Železný, T. Jungwirth, and J. Wunderlich, Electrically induced and detected Néel vector reversal in a collinear antiferromagnet, Nat. Commun. 9, 4686 (2018).
  9. Z. Kašpar, M. Surynek, J. Zubáč, F. Krizek, V. Novák, R. P. Campion, M. S. Wörnle, P. Gambardella, X. Marti, P. Němec et al., Quenching of an antiferromagnet into high resistivity states using electrical or ultrashort optical pulses, Nat. Electron. 4, 30 (2021).
  10. J. Zubáč, Z. Kašpar, F. Krizek, T. Förster, R. P. Campion, V. Novák, T. Jungwirth, and K. Olejník, Hysteretic effects and magnetotransport of electrically switched CuMnAs, Phys. Rev. B 104, 184424 (2021).
  11. M. Surynek, J. Zubac, K. Olejnik, A. Farkas, F. Krizek, L. Nadvornik, P. Kubascik, F. Trojanek, R. Campion, V. Novak et al., Picosecond transfer from short-term to long-term memory in analog antiferromagnetic memory device, Newton 1, 100034 (2025).
  12. P. Wadley, V. Hills, M. Shahedkhah, K. Edmonds, R. Campion, V. Novák, B. Ouladdiaf, D. Khalyavin, S. Langridge, V. Saidl et al., Antiferromagnetic structure in tetragonal CuMnAs thin films, Sci. Rep. 5, 17079 (2015).
  13. K. Motizuki, H. Ido, T. Itoh, and M. Morifuji, Electronic Structure and Magnetism of 3d-Transition Metal Pnictides (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2010).
  14. Y. Zhang, J. Brgoch, and G. J. Miller, Magnetic ordering in tetragonal 3D metal arsenides M2As (M = Cr, Mn, Fe): An ab initio investigation, Inorg. Chem. 52, 3013 (2013).
  15. K. Momma and F. Izumi, VESTA: A three-dimensional visualization system for electronic and structural analysis, J. Appl. Crystallogr. 41, 653 (2008).
  16. A. Austin, E. Adelson, and W. Cloud, Magnetic structures of Mn2As and Mn2Sb0.7As0.3, in Proceedings of the Seventh Conference on Magnetism and Magnetic Materials (Springer, New York, NY, 1962), pp. 1356–1357.
  17. M. Yuzuri and M. Yamada, On the magnetic properties of the compound Mn2As, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 15, 1845 (1960).
  18. F. Máca, J. Kudrnovský, P. Baláž, V. Drchal, K. Carva, and I. Turek, Tetragonal CuMnAs alloy: Role of defects, J. Magn. Magn. Mater. 474, 467 (2019).
  19. V. Novák, K. Olejník, M. Cukr, L. Smrčka, Z. Remeš, and J. Oswald, Substrate temperature changes during molecular beam epitaxy growth of GaMnAs, J. Appl. Phys. 102, 083536 (2007).
  20. See Supplemental Material at http://link.aps.org/supplemental/10.1103/1c81-tnzw for detailed description of experimental methods, additional XRD and TEM data and analysis, measurement setup, RHEED images and magnetometry.
  21. F. Krizek, Z. Kašpar, A. Vetushka, D. Kriegner, E. M. Fiordaliso, J. Michalicka, O. Man, J. Zubáč, M. Brajer, V. A. Hills et al., Molecular beam epitaxy of CuMnAs, Phys. Rev. Mater. 4, 014409 (2020).
  22. J. Narayan and S. Oktyabrsky, Formation of misfit dislocations in thin film heterostructures, J. Appl. Phys. 92, 7122 (2002).
  23. J. Schindelin, I. Arganda-Carreras, E. Frise, V. Kaynig, M. Longair, T. Pietzsch, S. Preibisch, C. Rueden, S. Saalfeld, B. Schmid et al., Fiji: An open-source platform for biological-image analysis, Nat. Methods 9, 676 (2012).
  24. D. Kriegner, E. Wintersberger, and J. Stangl, xrayutilities: A versatile tool for reciprocal space conversion of scattering data recorded with linear and area detectors, J. Appl. Crystallogr. 46, 1162 (2013).
  25. Z. Yang, K. Zhang, and X. Xie, Electronic structure and magnetic properties of Mn2As, Phys. Rev. B 58, 339 (1998).
  26. M. Wang, C. Andrews, S. Reimers, O. J. Amin, P. Wadley, R. P. Campion, S. F. Poole, J. Felton, K. W. Edmonds, B. L. Gallagher et al., Spin flop and crystalline anisotropic magnetoresistance in CuMnAs, Phys. Rev. B 101, 094429 (2020).
  27. S. N. Zhang, Q. S. Wu, Y. Liu, and O. V. Yazyev, Magnetoresistance from Fermi surface topology, Phys. Rev. B 99, 035142 (2019).
  28. P. Ritzinger and K. Výborný, Anisotropic magnetoresistance: Materials, models and applications, R. Soc. Open Sci. 10, 230564 (2023).
  29. J. Volný, D. Wagenknecht, J. Železný, P. Harcuba, E. Duverger–Nedellec, R. H. Colman, J. Kudrnovský, I. Turek, K. Uhlířová, and K. Výborný, Electrical transport properties of bulk tetragonal CuMnAs, Phys. Rev. Mater. 4, 064403 (2020).
  30. M. Meinert, D. Graulich, and T. Matalla-Wagner, Electrical switching of antiferromagnetic Mn2Au and the role of thermal activation, Phys. Rev. Appl. 9, 064040 (2018).
  31. F. Krizek, S. Reimers, Z. Kašpar, A. Marmodoro, J. Michalička, O. Man, A. Edström, O. J. Amin, K. W. Edmonds, R. P. Campion et al., Atomically sharp domain walls in an antiferromagnet, Sci. Adv. 8, eabn3535 (2022).
  32. J. C. Phillips, Axiomatic theories of ideal stretched exponential relaxation, J. Non-Cryst. Solids 352, 4490 (2006).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. B 112, 144401– Published 1 October, 2025
  • Received 4 November 2024
  • Revised 6 June 2025
  • Accepted 5 August 2025
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation