Anomalous Hall effect in thin bismuth

Bismuth, the heaviest of all stable group V elements with strong spin-orbit coupling, is famously known to exhibit many interesting transport properties, and effects such as Shubnikov-de Haas and de Haas-van Alphen were first revealed in its bulk form. However, the transport properties have not yet been fully explored experimentally in thin bismuth nor in its two-dimensional limit. In this work, bismuth flakes with average thicknesses ranging from 29 to 69 nm were mechanically exfoliated by a microtrench technique and were used to fabricate four-point devices. Due to the mixing of components, Onsager's relations were used to extract the longitudinal (Rₓₓ) and Hall (Rxy) resistances where the latter shows a Hall anomaly that is consistent with the anomalous Hall effect. Our work strongly suggests that that there could be a hidden mechanism for time-reversal symmetry breaking in pure bismuth thin films.