  A central theme in condensed matter physics is to create and understand the
exotic states of matter by incorporating magnetism into topological materials.
One prime example is the quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) state. Recently, MnBi2Te4
has been demonstrated to be an intrinsic magnetic topological insulator and the
QAH effect was observed in exfoliated MnBi2Te4 flakes. Here, we used molecular
beam epitaxy (MBE) to grow MnBi2Te4 films with thickness down to 1 septuple
layer (SL) and performed thickness-dependent transport measurements. We
observed a non-square hysteresis loop in the antiferromagnetic state for films
with thickness greater than 2 SL. The hysteresis loop can be separated into two
AH components. Through careful analysis, we demonstrated that one AH component
with the larger coercive field is from the dominant MnBi2Te4 phase, while the
other AH component with the smaller coercive field is from the minor Mn-doped
Bi2Te3 phase in the samples. The extracted AH component of the MnBi2Te4 phase
shows a clear even-odd layer-dependent behavior, a signature of
antiferromagnetic thin films. Our studies reveal insights on how to optimize
the MBE growth conditions to improve the quality of MnBi2Te4 films, in which
the QAH and other exotic states are predicted.
