Dresden 2026 – scientific programme
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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus
MA 33: Altermagnets IV
MA 33.5: Talk
Wednesday, March 11, 2026, 16:00–16:15, HSZ/0002
Realization of epitaxial thin films of CrSb altermagnetic candidate material — •Edouard Lesne and Claudia Felser — Max-Planck-Institute für Chemische Physik fester Stoffe
CrSb belongs to a newly identified class of antiferromagnetically ordered materials coined altermagnets, whose spin-sublattices arrangement breaks time-reversal symmetry, giving rise to alternating spin-split bands with lifted Kramers degeneracy throughout the Brillouin zone. CrSb crystallizes in the hexagonal NiAs-type structure (P63/mmc) and exhibits a high antiferromagnetic ordering temperature (700-710 K), making it an ideal altermagnetic candidate material for room-temperature studies and prospective technological use in antiferromagnetic spintronic architectures.
We resort to a combination of X-ray diffraction, SQUID magnetometry and electrical magnetotransport techniques to investigate the intertwined structural, magnetic, and electronic transport properties of CrSb epitaxial thin films. We explore the growth of CrSb crystalline films by magnetron sputtering on a variety of crystalline seed layers and underlying single-crystalline substrates with hexagonal or cubic symmetry, which allows the stabilization of different crystallographic orientations of CrSb, while also tuning epitaxial strain. This work, while providing a testbed for the fundamental study of altermagnets and their structure-properties relationship, also opens avenues for the use of altermagnetic CrSb for antiferromagnetic devices with new functionalities relying on the manipulation of charge, orbital and spin degrees of freedom.
Keywords: Altermagnet; Epitaxy; CrSb; Magnetotransport; Sputtering