Search

The discoveries of two-dimensional ferromagnetism and magnetic semiconductors highly enrich the magnetic material family for constructing spin-based electronic devices but with an acknowledged challenge that the Curie temperature (Tc) is usually far below room temperature. Many efforts such as voltage control and magnetic ion doping are currently underway to enhance the functional temperature, in which the involvement of additional electrodes or extra magnetic ions limits their plenty of applications in practical devices. Here we demonstrate that the magnetic proximity, a robust effect but with elusive mechanisms, can induce room-temperature ferromagnetism at the interface between sputtered Pt and semiconducting Fe3GeTe2, both of which do not show ferromagnetism at 300 K. The independent electrical and magnetization measurements, structure analysis, and control samples with Ta highlighting the role of Pt confirm that the ferromagnetism with the Tc of above 400 K arises from the Fe3GeTe2/Pt interfaces, rather than Fe aggregation or other artificial effects. Moreover, contrary to conventional ferromagnet/Pt structures, the spin current generated by the Pt layer is enhanced more than two times at the Fe3GeTe2/Pt interfaces, indicating the potential applications of the unique proximity effect in building high-efficient spintronic devices. These results may pave a new avenue to create room-temperature functional spin devices based on low-Tc materials and provide clear evidences of magnetic proximity effects by using non-ferromagnetic materials.

The topological Hall effect (THE) is critical to the exploration of the spin chirality generated by the real-space Berry curvature, which has attracted worldwide attention for its prospective applications in spintronic devices. However, the prominent THE remains elusive at room temperature, which severely restricts the practical integration of chiral spin textures. Here, we show a colossal intrinsic THE in large-area ferromagnet Cr5Te6 thin films epitaxially grown by pulsed laser deposition. Such a THE can be maintained until 270 K, which is attributed to the field-stimulated noncoplanar spin textures induced by the interaction of the in-plane ferromagnet and antiferromagnet infrastructures. Our first-principles calculations further verify the considerable Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in Cr5Te6. This work not only paves the way for robust chiral spin textures near room temperature in large-area low-dimensional ferromagnetic films for practical applications, but also facilitates the development of high-density and dissipationless spintronic devices., Comment: 18 pages, 13 figures, 1 table

Magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) with conventional bulk ferromagnets separated by a nonmagnetic insulating layer are key building blocks in spintronics for magnetic sensors and memory. A radically different approach of using atomically-thin van der Waals (vdW) materials in MTJs is expected to boost their figure of merit, the tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR), while relaxing the lattice-matching requirements from the epitaxial growth and supporting high-quality integration of dissimilar materials with atomically-sharp interfaces. We report TMR up to 192% at 10 K in all-vdW Fe3GeTe2/GaSe/Fe3GeTe2 MTJs. Remarkably, instead of the usual insulating spacer, this large TMR is realized with a vdW semiconductor GaSe. Integration of two-dimensional ferromagnets in semiconductor-based vdW junctions offers gate-tunability, bias dependence, magnetic proximity effects, and spin-dependent optical-selection rules. We demonstrate that not just the magnitude, but also the TMR sign is tuned by the applied bias or the semiconductor thickness, enabling modulation of highly spin-polarized carriers in vdW semiconductors.

We report the interplay between two different topological phases in condensed matter physics, the magnetic chiral domain wall (DW), and the quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) effect. We show that the chiral DW driven by Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) can divide the uniform domain into several zones where the neighboring zone possesses opposite quantized Hall conductance. The separated domain with a chiral edge state (CES) can be continuously modified by external magnetic field-induced domain expansion and thermal fluctuation, which gives rise to the reconfigurable QAH effect. More interestingly, we show that the position of CES can be tuned by spin current-driven chiral DW motion. Several two-dimensional magnets with high Curie temperatures and large topological band gaps are proposed for realizing these phenomena. Our work thus reveals the possibility of chiral DW controllable QAH effects.

Realizing sizeable Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) in intrinsic two-dimensional (2D) magnets without any manipulation will greatly enrich potential application of spintronics devices. The simplest and most desirable situation should be 2D magnets with intrinsic DMI and intrinsic chiral spin textures. Here, we propose to realize DMI by designing periodic ripple structures with different curvatures in low-dimensional magnets and demonstrate the concept in both one-dimensional (1D) CrBr2 and two-dimensional (2D) MnSe2 magnets by using first-principles calculations. We find that DMIs in curved CrBr2 and MnSe2 can be efficiently controlled by varying the size of curvature c, where c is defined as the ratio between the height h and the length l of curved structure. Moreover, we unveil that the dependence of first-principles calculated DMI on size of curvature c can be well described by the three-site Fert-L\'evy model. At last, we uncover that field-free magnetic skyrmions can be realized in curved MnSe2 by using atomistic spin model simulations based on first-principles calculated magnetic parameters. The work will open a new avenue for inducing DMI and chiral spin textures in simple 2D magnets via curvature., Comment: Published on Physical Review B 106, 054426

Realizing effective manipulation and explicit identification of topological spin textures are two crucial ingredients to make them as information carrier in spintronic devices with high storage density, high data handling speed and low energy consumption. Electric-field manipulation of magnetism has been achieved as a dissipationless method compared with traditional regulations. However, the magnetization is normally insensitive to the electric field since it does not break time-reversal symmetry directly, and distribution of topological magnetic quasiparticles is difficult to maintain due to the drift arising from external fluctuation, which could result in ambiguous recognition between quasiparticles and uniform magnetic background. Here, we demonstrate that electric polarization-driven skyrmionic and uniform ferromagnetic states can be easily and explicitly distinguished by transverse voltage arising from anomalous valley Hall effect in the Janus magnet-based multiferroic heterostructure LaClBr/In2Se3. Our work provides an alternative approach for data encoding, in which data are encoded by combing topological spin textures with detectable electronic transport., Comment: published in 2D materials, 9, 045030 (2022)

Magnetic skyrmions, topologically protected chiral spin swirling quasiparticles, have attracted great attention in fundamental physics and applications. Recently, the discovery of two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) magnets has aroused great interest due to their appealing physical properties. Moreover, both experimental and theoretical works have revealed that isotropic Dzyaloshinskii Moriya interaction (DMI) can be achieved in 2D magnets or ferromagnet-based heterostructures. However, 2D magnets with anisotropic DMI haven't been reported yet. Here, via using first-principles calculations, we unveil that anisotropic DMI protected by D2d crystal symmetry can exist in 2D ternary compounds MCuX2. Interestingly, by using micromagnetic simulations, we demonstrate that ferromagnetic (FM) antiskyrmions, FM bimerons, antiferromagnetic (AFM) antiskyrmions and AFM bimerons can be realized in MCuX2 family. Our discovery opens up an avenue to creating antiskyrmions and bimerons with anisotropic DMI protected by D2d crystal symmetry in 2D magnets., Comment: Main text and supplementary materials attached

As a fundamental magnetic parameter, Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI), has gained a great deal of attention in the last two decades due to its critical role in formation of magnetic skyrmions. Recent discoveries of two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) magnets has also gained a great deal of attention due to appealing physical properties, such as gate tunability, flexibility and miniaturization. Intensive studies have shown that isotropic DMI stabilizes ferromagnetic (FM) topological spin textures in 2D magnets or their corresponding heterostructures. However, the investigation of anisotropic DMI and antiferromagnetic (AFM) topological spin configurations remains elusive. Here, we propose and demonstrate that a family of 2D magnets with P4-m2 symmetry-protected anisotropic DMI. More interestingly, various topological spin configurations, including FM/AFM antiskyrmion and AFM vortex-antivortex pair, emerge in this family. These results give a general method to design anisotropic DMI and pave the way towards topological magnetism in 2D materials using crystal symmetry., Comment: 5 figures

We propose a spin valve that is based on van der Waals antiferromagnetism and fully electrically controlled. The device is composed of two antiferromagnetic terminals that allow for vertical bias control and a linked central scattering potential region. The magnetoresistance varies significantly when the bias orientations in two terminals are switched from parallel to antiparallel because this switch induces a mismatch of the bands for the same spin projection in different parts of the system. It is shown from density functional calculations that bilayer graphene encapsulated by two atomic layers of Cr$_2$Ge$_2$Te$_6$ provides a material platform to realize the antiferromagnetism, which is robust against the required vertical electric fields., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures