Epitaxial growth of high quality Mn₃Sn thin films by pulsed laser deposition

Noncollinear antiferromagnet Weyl semimetal Mn₃Sn has recently attracted great research interest. Although large anomalous Hall effect (AHE), anomalous Nernst effect (ANE), and magneto-optical effect have been observed in Mn₃Sn, most studies are based on single crystals. So far, it is still challenging to grow high quality epitaxial Mn₃Sn thin films with transport and optical properties comparable to their single crystal counterparts. Here, we report the structure and magneto-optical and transport properties of epitaxial Mn₃Sn thin films fabricated by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). Highly oriented Mn_3+xSn_1-x (0001) and (112¯0) epitaxial films are growth on single crystalline Al₂O₃ and MgO substrates. Large anomalous Hall effect up to Δρ_H = 3.02 μΩ cm and longitudinal magneto-optical Kerr effect with |θ_K| = 38.1 mdeg at 633 nm wavelength are measured at 300 K, which are comparable to Mn₃Sn single crystals. Our work demonstrates that high quality Mn₃Sn epitaxial thin films can be fabricated by PLD, paving the way for future device applications.