Robust ferromagnetism in wafer-scale Fe3GaTe2 above room-temperature

Shuxiang Wu; Zhihao He; Minghui Gu; Lizhu Ren; Jibin Li; Bo Deng; Di Wang; Xinhao Guo; Wanjiong Li; Mingyi Chen; Yijun Chen; Meng Meng; Quanlin Ye; Bing Shen; Xinman Chen; Jiandong Guo; Guozhong Xing; Iam Keong Sou; Shuwei Li

doi:10.1038/s41467-024-54936-1

Robust ferromagnetism in wafer-scale Fe₃GaTe₂ above room-temperature

Nat Commun. 2024 Dec 30;15(1):10765. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-54936-1.

Authors

Shuxiang Wu^#¹, Zhihao He^#², Minghui Gu^#³, Lizhu Ren^#⁴, Jibin Li⁵, Bo Deng⁶, Di Wang⁷, Xinhao Guo⁸, Wanjiong Li⁸, Mingyi Chen⁸, Yijun Chen⁸, Meng Meng⁹, Quanlin Ye¹⁰, Bing Shen¹¹, Xinman Chen⁵, Jiandong Guo^{3

12}, Guozhong Xing⁷, Iam Keong Sou², Shuwei Li^{8

13}

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China. wushx3@mail.sysu.edu.cn.
² Department of Physics, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, 999077, China.
³ Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics and Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China.
⁴ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117576, Singapore.
⁵ Guangdong Engineering Research Center of Optoelectronic Functional Materials and Device, School of Electronic Science and Engineering (School of Microelectronics), South China Normal University, Foshan, 528225, China.
⁶ Hangzhou Key Laboratory of Quantum Matter, School of Physics, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, 311121, China.
⁷ Institute of Microelectronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China.
⁸ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China.
⁹ Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics and Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China. mengm@iphy.ac.cn.
¹⁰ Hangzhou Key Laboratory of Quantum Matter, School of Physics, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, 311121, China. qlye@hznu.edu.cn.
¹¹ School of Physics, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China.
¹² School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
¹³ State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

The discovery of ferromagnetism in van der Waals (vdW) materials has enriched the understanding of two-dimensional (2D) magnetic orders and opened new avenues for fundamental physics research and next generation spintronics. However, achieving ferromagnetic order at room temperature, along with strong perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, remains a significant challenge. In this work, we report wafer-scale growth of vdW ferromagnet Fe₃GaTe₂ using molecular beam epitaxy. The epitaxial Fe₃GaTe₂ films exhibit robust ferromagnetism, exemplified by high Curie temperature (T_C = 420 K) and large perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) constant K_U = 6.7 × 10⁵J/m³ at 300 K for nine-unit-cell film. Notably, the ferromagnetic order is preserved even in the one-unit-cell film with T_C reaching 345 K, benefiting from the strong PMA (K_U = 1.8×10⁵J/m³ at 300 K). In comparison to exfoliated Fe₃GaTe₂ flakes, our epitaxial films with the same thickness show the significant enhancement of T_C, which could be ascribed to the tensile strain effect from the substrate. The successful realization of wafer-scale ferromagnetic Fe₃GaTe₂ films with T_C far above room temperature represents a substantial advancement (in some aspects or some fields, e.g. material science), paving the way for the development of 2D magnet-based spintronic devices.