Abstract
Magnetic van der Waals heterostructures provide a unique platform to study magnetism and spintronics device concepts in the 2D limit. Here, studies of exchange bias from the van der Waals antiferromagnet CrSBr acting on the van der Waals ferromagnet Fe3GeTe2 (FGT) are reported. The orientation of the exchange bias is along the in-plane easy axis of CrSBr, perpendicular to the out-of-plane anisotropy of the FGT, inducing a strongly tilted magnetic configuration in the FGT. Furthermore, the in-plane exchange bias provides sufficient symmetry breaking to allow deterministic spin–orbit torque switching of the FGT in CrSBr/FGT/Pt samples at zero applied magnetic field. A minimum thickness of the CrSBr of >10 nm is needed to provide a non-zero exchange bias at 30 K.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 2305739 |
| Journal | Advanced Materials |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue number | 13 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Mar 28 2024 |
Funding
The authors thank Rakshit Jain, Patrick Knüppel, Steve Kriske, Liguo Ma, Aaron Windsor, and Jiacheng Zhu for experimental assistance, and inspiring discussions with Märta Tschudin, Arnab Bose, John Cenker, Vishakha Gupta, Shengwei Jiang, Kaifei Kang, Kihong Lee, Kin Fai Mak, and Jie Shan. The research at Cornell was supported by the AFOSR/MURI project 2DMagic (FA9550‐19‐1‐0390) and the US National Science Foundation through the Cornell Center for Materials Research (DMR‐1719875). T.M.J.C. was supported by the Singapore Agency for Science, Technology, and Research, and Y.K.L. acknowledges the Cornell Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship. The work utilized the shared facilities of the Cornell Center for Materials Research and the Cornell NanoScale Facility, a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (supported by the NSF via grant NNCI‐2025233), and it benefited from instrumentation support by the Kavli Institute at Cornell. Synthesis of the CrSBr crystals was supported as part of Programmable Quantum Materials, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES), under award DE‐SC0019443, and the Columbia MRSEC on Precision‐Assembled Quantum Materials (PAQM) under award number DMR‐2011738. FGT crystal growth and characterization (AFM) was supported by the U. S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division. Electron microscopy was supported by the PARADIM NSF Materials Innovation Platform (DMR‐2039380).
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Singapore Agency for Science, Technology, and Research | |
| National Science Foundation | NNCI‐2025233 |
| U.S. Department of Energy | |
| Air Force Office of Scientific Research | |
| Office of Science | |
| Basic Energy Sciences | DE‐SC0019443 |
| Cornell Center for Materials Research | DMR‐1719875 |
| Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering | DMR‐2039380 |
| Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Harvard University | DMR‐2011738 |
| Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative | FA9550‐19‐1‐0390 |
| Kavli Institute at Cornell, Cornell University |
Keywords
- CrSBr
- FeGeTe
- exchange bias
- field-free spin–orbit-torque switching
- magnetic van der Waals heterostructures
- non-uniform spin configuration
- uniaxial magnetocrystalline anistropy