Nanowerk December 27, 2022
Combining two different magnetic orders and investigating the magnetic proximity at the interface remains largely unexplored. An international team of researchers (Japan, USA – Purdue University, research org, Pennsylvania State University, Denmark, China) studied the heterostructures of layered antiferromagnets, CrI3 and CrCl3 to characterize the magnetic behaviors down to a few atomic layers. They observed an emergent interfacial ferromagnetism when bringing these two antiferromagnets together, with an even higher critical temperature than both the constituent materials. They demonstrated that an out-of-plane magnetic order was established in the CrCl3 layer proximal to CrI3. The interfacial magnetism showed significantly enhanced electric-field tunability, in sharp contrast to the previously studied gate-tunable vdW magnet device (such as doping-dominated control in bilayer CrI3). The novel tunability is attributed to the naturally broken structural inversion symmetry of the heterostructure, allowing unprecedented direct spin-charge coupling. Their findings could enable the modulation of magnetic interactions and establish exotic magnetic phases and properties…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
Electrical control of the magnetism in 1L CrI3/FL CrCl3 heterostructure. Credit: Nature Communications volume 13, Article number: 7348 (2022)Â