- Chi, Hang;
- Ou, Yunbo;
- Eldred, Tim;
- Gao, Wenpei;
- Kwon, Sohee;
- Murray, Joseph;
- Dreyer, Michael;
- Butera, Robert;
- Foucher, Alexandre;
- Ambaye, Haile;
- Keum, Jong;
- Greenberg, Alice;
- Liu, Yuhang;
- Neupane, Mahesh;
- de Coster, George;
- Vail, Owen;
- Taylor, Patrick;
- Folkes, Patrick;
- Rong, Charles;
- Yin, Gen;
- Lake, Roger;
- Ross, Frances;
- Lauter, Valeria;
- Heiman, Don;
- Moodera, Jagadeesh
Magnetic transition metal chalcogenides form an emerging platform for exploring spin-orbit driven Berry phase phenomena owing to the nontrivial interplay between topology and magnetism. Here we show that the anomalous Hall effect in pristine Cr2Te3 thin films manifests a unique temperature-dependent sign reversal at nonzero magnetization, resulting from the momentum-space Berry curvature as established by first-principles simulations. The sign change is strain tunable, enabled by the sharp and well-defined substrate/film interface in the quasi-two-dimensional Cr2Te3 epitaxial films, revealed by scanning transmission electron microscopy and depth-sensitive polarized neutron reflectometry. This Berry phase effect further introduces hump-shaped Hall peaks in pristine Cr2Te3 near the coercive field during the magnetization switching process, owing to the presence of strain-modulated magnetic layers/domains. The versatile interface tunability of Berry curvature in Cr2Te3 thin films offers new opportunities for topological electronics.