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Strong room-temperature ferromagnetism in VSe2 monolayers on van der Waals substrates

Nature Nanotechnology volume 13, pages 289–293 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Reduced dimensionality and interlayer coupling in van der Waals materials gives rise to fundamentally different electronic1, optical2 and many-body quantum3,4,5 properties in monolayers compared with the bulk. This layer-dependence permits the discovery of novel material properties in the monolayer regime. Ferromagnetic order in two-dimensional materials is a coveted property that would allow fundamental studies of spin behaviour in low dimensions and enable new spintronics applications6,7,8. Recent studies have shown that for the bulk-ferromagnetic layered materials CrI3 (ref. 9) and Cr2Ge2Te6 (ref. 10), ferromagnetic order is maintained down to the ultrathin limit at low temperatures. Contrary to these observations, we report the emergence of strong ferromagnetic ordering for monolayer VSe2, a material that is paramagnetic in the bulk11,12. Importantly, the ferromagnetic ordering with a large magnetic moment persists to above room temperature, making VSe2 an attractive material for van der Waals spintronics applications.

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Fig. 1: (Sub)monolayer VSe2 films grown on HOPG or MoS2 substrates characterized by STM and UPS.
Fig. 2: Evidence for CDW transition in monolayer VSe2.
Fig. 3: Magnetic properties of VSe2 films on HOPG substrates.
Fig. 4: Magnetic properties of VSe2 films on MoS2 substrates.

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Acknowledgements

This project was primarily supported by the National Science Foundation under grant DMR-1701390. V.K., R.D. and M.-H.P. also acknowledge support from the US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering under Award No. DE-FG02-07ER46438 and thank H. Srikanth for useful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

    Manuel Bonilla, Sadhu Kolekar, Yujing Ma, Horacio Coy Diaz, Vijaysankar Kalappattil, Raja Das, Tatiana Eggers, Humberto R. Gutierrez, Manh-Huong Phan & Matthias Batzill

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  1. Manuel Bonilla
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Contributions

M.Bo., S.K., H.C.D. and Y.M. synthesized samples and characterized and analysed the samples by STM, XPS and UPS. V.K. and R.D. performed magnetic characterization. T.E. carried out the L-MOKE experiments. H.R.G. performed Raman characterization. M.-H.P. and M.Ba. directed the research and wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed to the discussion of the data and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Matthias Batzill.

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Bonilla, M., Kolekar, S., Ma, Y. et al. Strong room-temperature ferromagnetism in VSe2 monolayers on van der Waals substrates. Nature Nanotech 13, 289–293 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-018-0063-9

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