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Condensed-matter physics

Magnetism in flatland

Nature volume 546, pages 216–217 (2017)Cite this article

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A pair of two-dimensional materials have been shown to exhibit ferromagnetism — the familiar type of magnetism found in iron bar magnets. Such materials could have applications from sensing to data storage. See Letters p.265 & p.270

Ferromagnetism is perhaps the oldest known phenomenon of purely quantum-mechanical origin. It refers to the alignment of magnetic moments (spins) in certain materials that results in uniform, permanent magnetization, such as that seen in iron. An approach to studying truly two-dimensional ferromagnets has been lacking, but on pages 265 and 270, respectively, Gong et al.1 and Huang et al.2 report an advance in this direction. Using a high-sensitivity microscopy technique, the authors remarkably observe ferromagnetic behaviour in atomically thin layers of two magnetic materials: chromium germanium telluride (Cr2Ge2Te6) and chromium triiodide (CrI3).

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Figure 1: The Ising and Heisenberg models.

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  1. the Department of Physics, Penn State University, 16802-6300, Pennsylvania, USA

    Nitin Samarth

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  1. Nitin Samarth
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Correspondence to Nitin Samarth.

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Samarth, N. Magnetism in flatland. Nature 546, 216–217 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/546216a

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