Measurement of the Hall effect at nanoscale with three probes

The Hall effect and its varieties such as quantum, anomalous, and spin Hall effects provide indispensable tools for the characterization of electronic and magnetic properties of materials, metrology, and spintronics. The conventional four-probe Hall configuration is generally not amenable to measurements at nanoscale due to current shunting by the Hall electrodes. We demonstrate that Hall measurements on the nanoscale can be facilitated by the three-probe Hall configuration that avoids the shunting problem. We illustrate the efficiency of the proposed approach with anomalous Hall effect-based measurements of individual activation events during domain wall motion in magnetic films with perpendicular anisotropy.