Light-Tunable Ferromagnetism in Atomically Thin Fe3GeTe2 Driven by Femtosecond Laser Pulse

The recent discovery of intrinsic ferromagnetism in two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) crystals has opened up a new arena for spintronics, raising an opportunity of achieving tunable intrinsic 2D vdW magnetism. Here, we show that the magnetization and the magnetic anisotropy energy (MAE) of few-layered Fe3GeTe2(FGT) is strongly modulated by a femtosecond laser pulse. Upon increasing the femtosecond laser excitation intensity, the saturation magnetization increases in an approximately linear way and the coercivity determined by the MAE decreases monotonically, showing unambiguously the effect of the laser pulse on magnetic ordering. This effect observed at room temperature reveals the emergence of light-driven room-temperature (300 K) ferromagnetism in 2D vdW FGT, as its intrinsic Curie temperature TC is ~200K. The light-tunable ferromagnetism is attributed to the changes in the electronic structure due to the optical doping effect. Our findings pave a novel way to optically tune 2D vdW magnetism and enhance the TC up to room temperature, promoting spintronic applications at or above room temperature.