Anomalous Hall effect of facing-target sputtered ferrimagnetic Mn4N epitaxial films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy

Epitaxial Mn$_{4}$N films with different thicknesses were fabricated by facing-target reactive sputtering and their anomalous Hall effect (AHE) is investigated systematically. The Hall resistivity shows a reversed magnetic hysteresis loop with the magnetic field. The magnitude of the anomalous Hall resistivity sharply decreases with decreasing temperature from 300 K to 150 K. The AHE scaling law in Mn$_{4}$N films is influenced by the temperature-dependent magnetization, carrier concentration and interfacial scattering. Different scaling laws are used to distinguish the various contributions of AHE mechanisms. The scaling exponent $\gamma > 2$ for the conventional scaling in Mn$_{4}$N films could be attributed to the residual resistivity $\rho_{xx0}$. The longitudinal conductivity $\sigma_{xx}$ falls into the dirty regime. The scaling of $\rho_{\rm AH}=\alpha \rho_{xx0} +b\rho_{xx}^{n}$ is used to separate out the temperature-independent $\rho_{xx0}$ from extrinsic contribution. Moreover, the relationship between $\rho_{\rm AH}$ and $\rho_{xx}$ is fitted by the proper scaling to clarify the contributions from extrinsic and intrinsic mechanisms of AHE, which demonstrates that the dominant mechanism of AHE in the Mn$_{4}$N films can be ascribed to the competition between skew scattering, side jump and the intrinsic mechanisms.