Pressure-induced large anomalous Hall effects in a layered ferromagnet CrSiTe3

Ferromagnetic semiconductor CrSiTe3 with a layered honeycomb structure is a promising candidate for the Chern insulator in a monolayer form. However, detecting its topological transport properties is challenging as Dirac nodes are located far above the Fermi level. High pressure, an effective route to control the electronic structure, provides an opportunity to measure its topological transport properties. We find that while CrSiTe3 maintains the honeycomb structure up to ~12 GPa, it undergoes an insulator‒metal transition and a nearly concomitant increase of Curie temperature TC from ~33 to ~85 K at P1 ~ 6 GPa. Furthermore, the saturated magnetization Ms along the c-axis exhibits successive drops from Ms = 3 $${\mu }_{{\rm{B}}}$$ /Cr at ambient pressure to ~Ms/2 at P1 and to ~Ms/3 at 9.8 GPa. Notably, between P1 and 13.5 GPa, the anomalous Hall conductivity $${\sigma }_{{xy}}^{{AH}}$$ appears below TC and $${\sigma }_{{xy}}^{{AH}}$$ at 2 K exhibits a dome-like pressure evolution, reaching a maximum of $$\sim 67\,{\Omega }^-1\,{\text{cm}}^-1$$ , ~ 35% of $${e}²/{hc}$$ , at 10.4 GPa. These results suggest that large $${\sigma }_{{xy}}^{{AH}}$$ arises from the intrinsic Berry curvature inherent to the band topology of the pressure-induced ferromagnetic metallic states.