Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Valleytronics

A magnetic field for each electron

Nature Materials volume 22, pages 410–411 (2023)Cite this article

Subjects

The arrangement of magnetic ions between layers of NbS2 affects it as though a giant magnetic field is applied in different directions for electrons moving with opposite velocities. This discovery goes beyond the reach of conventional magnets, and opens up the way to custom-made effective fields engineered to guide materials into new territory.

Niobium disulfide (NbS2) is part of a large family of layered structures known as transition metal dichalcogenides. These versatile compounds host many phenomena at the heart of modern condensed-matter research, including unconventional superconductivity, pair density waves, charge and orbital order, spin textures, Weyl semimetals, topological states, pseudogaps and Fermi arcs, excitons and exciton condensates, Mott physics and more1,2,3,4,5,6. This wealth of physics is remarkably accessible, because of the layered structure of transition metal dichalcogenides, which can be studied with both surface and bulk techniques and allows for straightforward manipulation by, for example, applying strain, gating, intercalating or exfoliating7,8. The resulting richness in experimental observations provides a clear starting point for theoretical exploration into their many phases and the competing physical effects that underly them. Often, these are intricate, but not intractable, allowing quantitative modelling of phenomena that remain hard to understand in other classes of materials. Altogether, this provides an ideal playground for discovering new types of order and new ways in which physics emerges or can be applied.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Spin splitting in NbS2 mimicking the effect of a giant, valley-dependent magnetic field.

References

  1. Manzeli, S. et al. Nat. Rev. Mater. 2, 17033 (2017).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Liu, Y. et al. Nano Res. 12, 2695–2711 (2019).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Flicker, F. & van Wezel, J. Nat. Commun. 6, 7034 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Ma, L. et al. Nat. Commun. 7, 10956 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Liu, X., Chong, Y. X., Sharma, R. & Davis, J. C. S. Science 372, 1447–1452 (2021).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Kogar, A. et al. Science 358, 1314–1317 (2017).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Wang, H., Yuan, H., Hong, S. S., Li, Y. & Cui, Y. Chem. Soc. Rev. 44, 2664–2680 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Johari, P. & Shenoi, V. B. ACS Nano 6, 5449–5456 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Edwards, B. et al. Nat. Mater. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-022-01459-z (2023).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Bawden, L. et al. Nat. Commun. 7, 11711 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Jasper van Wezel

Authors
  1. Jasper van Wezel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jasper van Wezel.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

van Wezel, J. A magnetic field for each electron. Nat. Mater. 22, 410–411 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01503-6

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01503-6

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing