Nonvolatile Switching of Magnetism via Gate-Induced Sliding in Tetralayer Graphene

The stacking order of few-layer graphene determines the band structure. Within the rhombohedral band structure, correlated and topological states can be found around the Van Hove singularities, which are absent in the Bernal stacking order. In this work we show that the relative energy between stacking orders can be manipulated via doping and displacement field. By tuning into the rhombohedral favored region, we can drive a sliding transition which we observe as a sudden, hysteretic change in the resistance during transport measurements. This sliding transition is consistent, nonvolatile, and presents itself in a large portion of the accessible phase space. With this structural control we are able to switch the ferromagnetic state found within the rhombohedral band structure, noted by an anomalous Hall effect (AHE) found only on one side of the sliding transition. Furthermore, the sign of this AHE switches with respect to the displacement field direction, indicating a microscopic origin with broken inversion symmetry. Given the inversion symmetry of both rhombohedral and Bernal stacking, we suggest the multidomain nature of our device plays a key role, namely that the inversion symmetry broken domain walls play a role in this anomalous Hall effect. Further details can be found at our preprint [1].

[1] D. Brandon, T. Tan, Y. Ai, P. Golemis, A. Gandhi, L. Min, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, T. Devakul, and K. Yasuda, Nonvolatile Switching of Magnetism via Gate-Induced Sliding in Tetralayer Graphene, http://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00220.