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van der Waals heterostructures

Asymmetry in the magnetic neighbourhood

Nature Materials volume 22, pages 284–285 (2023)Cite this article

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Transforming atomically thin materials by their magnetic neighbours reveals a surprising asymmetry that allows a versatile control of the valley degrees of freedom and band topology in van der Waals heterostructures.

In a broader context, Choi and colleagues demonstrate an example of proximitized materials2. A given material can be transformed through proximity effects, whereby it acquires properties of its neighbours, for example, becoming magnetic, superconducting, topologically non-trivial, or with an enhanced spin–orbit coupling. Such proximity effects not only complement the conventional methods of designing materials by doping or functionalization, but can also overcome their various limitations. For example, direct doping of the common semiconductor GaAs by magnetic atoms (Mn) reveals the cost of adding magnetism: the high mobility of GaAs is lowered by several orders of magnitude, and its excellent optical emission properties are drastically degraded2. By contrast, through proximity effects in van der Waals heterostructures, desirable properties can be introduced more gently with a better-preserved identity of the host material.

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Fig. 1

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  1. Department of Physics, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Tong Zhou & Igor Žutić

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  1. Tong Zhou
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  2. Igor Žutić
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Correspondence to Tong Zhou or Igor Žutić.

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Zhou, T., Žutić, I. Asymmetry in the magnetic neighbourhood. Nat. Mater. 22, 284–285 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-022-01466-0

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