MIT News March 17, 2023
van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures formed by 2D magnets and semiconductors have provided a fertile ground for fundamental science and spintronics. Through first-principles calculations researchers at MIT have found a proximity exchange splitting of 14 meV (equivalent to an effective Zeeman field of 120 T) in the vdW magnet-semiconductor heterostructure MoS 2/CrBr 3, leading to a 2D spin-polarized half-metal with carrier densities ranging up to 1013 cm−2. They explored the effect of large exchange coupling on the electronic band structure when the magnetic layer hosts chiral spin textures such as skyrmions. A flat Chern band was found at a “magic” value of magnetization m¯0.2 for Schrödinger electrons which generally occurs for Dirac electrons. The magnetic proximity–induced anomalous Hall effect enables transport-based detection of chiral spin textures, and flat Chern bands provide an avenue for engineering various strongly correlated states… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Anomalous Hall effect from real-space topology. Credit: SCIENCE ADVANCES, 24 Feb 2023, Vol 9, Issue 8