Electrical and magnetic anisotropies in van der Waals multiferroic CuCrP2S6

Xiaolei Wang; Zixuan Shang; Chen Zhang; Jiaqian Kang; Tao Liu; Xueyun Wang; Siliang Chen; Haoliang Liu; Wei Tang; Yu-Jia Zeng; Jianfeng Guo; Zhihai Cheng; Lei Liu; Dong Pan; Shucheng Tong; Bo Wu; Yiyang Xie; Guangcheng Wang; Jinxiang Deng; Tianrui Zhai; Hui-Xiong Deng; Jiawang Hong; Jianhua Zhao

doi:10.1038/s41467-023-36512-1

Electrical and magnetic anisotropies in van der Waals multiferroic CuCrP₂S₆

Nat Commun. 2023 Feb 15;14(1):840. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-36512-1.

Authors

Xiaolei Wang¹, Zixuan Shang², Chen Zhang³, Jiaqian Kang⁴, Tao Liu⁵, Xueyun Wang⁶, Siliang Chen⁷, Haoliang Liu⁸, Wei Tang⁹, Yu-Jia Zeng¹⁰, Jianfeng Guo¹¹, Zhihai Cheng¹¹, Lei Liu³, Dong Pan³, Shucheng Tong³, Bo Wu¹², Yiyang Xie¹², Guangcheng Wang², Jinxiang Deng², Tianrui Zhai², Hui-Xiong Deng³, Jiawang Hong⁴, Jianhua Zhao³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Faculty of Science, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, 100124, China. xiaoleiwang@bjut.edu.cn.
² Department of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Faculty of Science, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, 100124, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Superlattices and Microstructures, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100083, China.
⁴ School of Aerospace Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China.
⁵ National Engineering Research Center of Electromagnetic Radiation Control Materials, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, China.
⁶ School of Aerospace Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China. xueyun@bit.edu.cn.
⁷ Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Semiconductor, Optoelectronic Materials and Intelligent Photonic Systems, School of Science, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), Shenzhen, 518055, China.
⁸ Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Semiconductor, Optoelectronic Materials and Intelligent Photonic Systems, School of Science, Harbin Institute of Technology (Shenzhen), Shenzhen, 518055, China. liuhaoliang@hit.edu.cn.
⁹ Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Devices and Systems of Ministry of Education and Guangdong Province, College of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, China.
¹⁰ Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Devices and Systems of Ministry of Education and Guangdong Province, College of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, China. yjzeng@szu.edu.cn.
¹¹ Department of Physics and Beijing Key Laboratory of Opto-electronic Functional Materials & Micro-nano Devices, Renmin University of China, Beijing, 100872, China.
¹² Key Laboratory of Optoelectronics Technology Ministry of Education, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, 100124, China.

Abstract

Multiferroic materials have great potential in non-volatile devices for low-power and ultra-high density information storage, owing to their unique characteristic of coexisting ferroelectric and ferromagnetic orders. The effective manipulation of their intrinsic anisotropy makes it promising to control multiple degrees of the storage "medium". Here, we have discovered intriguing in-plane electrical and magnetic anisotropies in van der Waals (vdW) multiferroic CuCrP₂S₆. The uniaxial anisotropies of current rectifications, magnetic properties and magnon modes are demonstrated and manipulated by electric direction/polarity, temperature variation and magnetic field. More important, we have discovered the spin-flop transition corresponding to specific resonance modes, and determined the anisotropy parameters by consistent model fittings and theoretical calculations. Our work provides in-depth investigation and quantitative analysis of electrical and magnetic anisotropies with the same easy axis in vdW multiferroics, which will stimulate potential device applications of artificial bionic synapses, multi-terminal spintronic chips and magnetoelectric devices.

Abstract

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