Chern Half Metals: A New Class of Topological Materials to Realize the Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect

New topological insulators that demonstrate the quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE) are a cutting-edge research topic in condensed matter physics and materials science. So far, the QAHE has been observed only in Cr-doped (Bi,Sb)(2)Te-3 at extremely low temperature. Therefore, it is important to find new materials with large topological band gap and high thermal stability for the realization of the QAHE. On the basis of first-principles and tight-binding model calculations, we discovered a new class of topological phase, Chern half metal, which manifests the QAHE in one spin channel while is metallic in the other spin channel, in Co or Rh deposited graphene. The QAHE is robust in these sytems for the adatom coverage ranging from 2% to 6%. Meanwhile, these systems have large perpendicular magnetic anisotropy energies of 5.3 and 11.5 meV, necessary for the observation of the QAHE at reasonably high temperature.