Perspectives on exfoliated two-dimensional spintronics

Magnetic orderings, i.e., the spontaneous alignment of electron spins below a critical temperature, have been playing key roles in modern science and technologies for both the wide applications of magnetic recording for information storage and the vibrant potential of solid state electronic spin devices (also known as spintronics) for logic operations. In the past decades, thanks to the development of thin film technologies, magnetic thin films via sputtering or epitaxial growth have made the spintronic devices possible at the industrial scale. Yet thinner materials at lower costs with more versatile functionalities are highly desirable for advancing future spintronics. Recently, van der Waals magnetic materials, a family of magnets that can in principle be exfoliated down to the monolayer limit, seem to have brought tremendous opportunities: new generation van der Waals spintronic devices can be seamlessly assembled with possible applications such as optoelectronics, flexible electronics, and etc. Moreover, those exfoliated spintronic devices can potentially be compatible with the famed metal-oxide field effect transistor architectures, allowing the harness of spin performances through the knob of an electrostatic field.

Room temperature ferromagnetism in ultra-thin van der Waals crystals of 1T-CrTe2

Although many emerging new phenomena have been unraveled in two dimensional(2D)materials with long-range spin orderings,the usually low critical temperature in van der Waals(vdW)magnetic material has thus far hindered the related practical applications.Here,we show that ferromagnetism can hold above 300 K in a metallic phase of 1T-CrTe2 down to the ultra-thin limit.It thus makes CrTe2 so far the only known exfoliated ultra-thin vdW magnets with intrinsic long-range magnetic ordering above room temperature.An in-plane room-temperature negative anisotropic magnetoresistance(AMR)was obtained in ultra-thin CrTe2 devices,with a sign change in the AMR at lower temperature,with−0.6%and+5%at 300 and 10 K,respectively.Our findings provide insights into magnetism in ultra-thin CrTe2,expanding the vdW crystals toolbox for future room-temperature spintronic applications.