Electrically managed exchange-bias impact found in magnetic van der Waals heterostructures

Van der Waals (vdW) ferromagnets are the constructing blocks of vdW heterostructure gadgets corresponding to vdW ferromagnetic (FM)-antiferromagnetic (AFM) heterostructures and vdW FM-ferroelectric heterostructures. These vdW heterostructure gadgets have attracted a number of consideration attributable to their promising purposes in trendy spintronics.

Nonetheless, the interface coupling of a vdW heterostructure is weak because of the massive vdW hole, which impedes the event of this burgeoning space. Understanding of electrically tune the interface coupling in vdW heterostructure gadget stays elusive.

Just lately, professor Zheng Guolin from the Excessive Magnetic area laboratory on the Hefei Institutes of Bodily Science on the Chinese language Academy of Sciences (CAS), collaborating with professor Lan Wang from Royal Melbourne Institute of Expertise College, experimentally studied the interface coupling in FePS₃-Fe₅GeTe₂ van der Waals heterostructures by way of proton intercalations.

That is the primary time scientists found that the interface coupling induced change bias impact may be electrically managed by way of gate-induced proton intercalations, which offer a promising solution to manipulate the interface coupling in lots of extra vdW heterostructures.

The outcomes have been just lately revealed in Nano Letters.

On this analysis, the crew fabricated FePS₃-Fe₅GeTe₂ vdW heterostructure gadgets (with the thickness of FM layer Fe₅GeTe₂ between 12-18 nm) and confirmed that the weak change bias results under 20 Okay developed because of the interface magnetic coupling.

Nonetheless, after they put the heterostructure gadgets onto the stable proton conductors, the blocking temperature (the place the change bias impact disappeared) was boosted as much as 60 Okay. Furthermore, the noticed change bias impact may be electrically switched “ON” and “OFF” because of the intercalations or de-intercalations of the protons underneath a gate voltage.

Curiously, the magnetic properties of the highest Fe₃GeTe₂ layer—together with coercivity, anomalous Corridor resistivity and Curie temperature—did not change throughout the entire gating course of, revealing that the proton intercalation has a really restricted impression on FM layer.

Additional theoretical calculations primarily based on density purposeful concept demonstrated that the proton intercalations primarily affected the magnetic coupling on the interface in addition to the magnetic configurations in AFM layer, resulting in a gate-tunable change bias impact.