Anomalous Hall effect in tetragonal antiperovskite GeNFe3 with a frustrated ferromagnetic state

Abstract

We report observed anomalous Hall effect (AHE) behavior in the antiperovskite compound GeNFe₃ with a tetragonal symmetry. The anomalous Hall coefficient R_H was estimated and exhibits a broad peak near the ferromagnetic (FM)–paramagnetic (PM) phase transition, and reduces to zero in the PM phase. The sign of the ordinary Hall coefficient R₀ changes sharply as a function of temperature, which provides evidence for the switching of different domain carriers. The relationship between the R_H and ρ_xx data was also plotted using the scaling law R_H = aρ_xx0 + bρ_xx^γ, and the parameter γ is found to be about 0.99. These results suggest that the mechanism of the AHE for tetragonal GeNFe₃ is mainly due to skew scattering. This finding enriches the understanding of the AHE mechanism for antiperovskite compounds, and the unusual mechanism for GeNFe₃ is considered to be closely related to the unique tetragonal crystal structure and frustrated FM ground state of antiperovskite compounds.