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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Switching of magnetic domains in a noncollinear antiferromagnet at the nanoscale

Atul Pandey1,2, Prajwal Rigvedi1, Edouard Lesne3, Jitul Deka1, Jiho Yoon1, Wolfgang Hoppe2, Chris Koerner2, Banabir Pal1, James M. Taylor2 et al.

Stuart S. P. Parkin1 and Georg Woltersdorf1,2,*

  • *Contact author: georg.woltersdorf@physik.uni-halle.de
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Phys. Rev. Research 7, L042058 – Published 9 December, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/tfzd-n9p8

Abstract

Antiferromagnets that display very small stray magnetic fields are ideal for spintronic applications. Of particular interest are noncollinear, chiral antiferromagnets of the type Mn3X (X = Sn, Ge), which display a large magnetotransport response that is correlated with their antiferromagnetic ordering. The ability to read out and manipulate this ordering is crucial for their integration into spintronic devices. These materials exhibit a tiny unbalanced magnetic moment such that a large external magnetic field can, in principle, be used to set the material into a single antiferromagnetic domain. However, in thin films of Mn3Sn, we find that such fields induce only a partial magnetic ordering. By detecting two orthogonal in-plane components of the magnetic order vector, we can demonstrate switching along multiple easy axes in Mn3Sn and find that the nonswitchable fraction has a unidirectional anisotropy. Studying the switching at the nanoscale allows us to correlate the pinning behavior to crystal grain boundaries in the Mn3Sn nanowire structures.

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Phys. Rev. Research 7, L042058– Published 9 December, 2025
  • Received 27 September 2024
  • Accepted 20 October 2025
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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. Open access publication funded by Max Planck Society.

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