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Determining the phase diagram of atomically thin layered antiferromagnet CrCl3

Nature Nanotechnology volume 14, pages 1116–1122 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Changes in the spin configuration of atomically thin, magnetic van der Waals multilayers can cause drastic modifications in their opto-electronic properties. Conversely, the opto-electronic response of these systems provides information about the magnetic state, which is very difficult to obtain otherwise. Here, we show that in CrCl3 multilayers, the dependence of the tunnelling conductance on applied magnetic field, temperature and number of layers tracks the evolution of the magnetic state, enabling the magnetic phase diagram to be determined experimentally. Besides a high-field spin-flip transition occurring for all thicknesses, the in-plane magnetoconductance exhibits an even–odd effect due to a low-field spin-flop transition. Through a quantitative analysis of the phenomena, we determine the interlayer exchange coupling as well as the layer magnetization and show that in CrCl3 shape anisotropy dominates. Our results reveal the rich behaviour of atomically thin layered antiferromagnets with weak magnetic anisotropy.

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Fig. 1: Tunnelling conductance through CrCl3 multilayers.
Fig. 2: Phase diagram of bi- and trilayer CrCl3.
Fig. 3: Even-odd effects in the magnetoconductance of multilayers.
Fig. 4: Thickness evolution of transition fields and saturation magnetization.
Fig. 5: Temperature dependence.

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All relevant data are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable and well-motivated request.

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely acknowledge N. Ubrig and H. Henck for helpful discussions and A. Ferreira for technical support. A.F.M. gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (Division II) and from the EU Graphene Flagship project. Z.W. acknowledges the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants no. 11904276). M.G. acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation through the Ambizione programme. K.W. and T.T. acknowledge support from the Elemental Strategy Initiative conducted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan, A3 Foresight by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and the CREST (JPMJCR15F3), Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Quantum Matter Physics, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Zhe Wang, Marco Gibertini, Dumitru Dumcenco, Enrico Giannini & Alberto F. Morpurgo

  2. Group of Applied Physics, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Zhe Wang & Alberto F. Morpurgo

  3. MOE Key Laboratory for Nonequilibrium Synthesis and Modulation of Condensed Matter, School of Science, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

    Zhe Wang

  4. National Centre for Computational Design and Discovery of Novel Materials, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Marco Gibertini

  5. National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan

    Takashi Taniguchi & Kenji Watanabe

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  1. Zhe Wang
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Contributions

Z.W., M.G. and A.F.M. conceived the work. D.D. and E.G. grew CrCl3 crystals and performed bulk characterization. T.T. and K.W. provided high-quality boron nitride crystals. Z.W. fabricated all samples and performed all transport measurements. M.G. carried out all theoretical modelling. Z.W., M.G. and A.F.M. analysed and interpreted the magnetoconductance data. All authors contributed to writing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Zhe Wang, Marco Gibertini or Alberto F. Morpurgo.

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Supplementary Notes 1–5, Figs. 1–10 and refs. 1–8.

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Wang, Z., Gibertini, M., Dumcenco, D. et al. Determining the phase diagram of atomically thin layered antiferromagnet CrCl3. Nat. Nanotechnol. 14, 1116–1122 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-019-0565-0

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