No Arabic abstract
The realization of magnetic frustration in a metallic van der Waals (vdW) coupled material has been sought as a promising platform to explore novel phenomena both in bulk matter and in exfoliated devices. However, a suitable material platform has been lacking so far. Here, we demonstrate that CeSiI hosts itinerant electrons coexisting with exotic magnetism. In CeSiI, the magnetic cerium atoms form a triangular bilayer structure sandwiched by van der Waals stacked iodine layers. From resistivity and magnetometry measurements, we confirm the coexistence of itinerant electrons with magnetism with dominant antiferromagnetic exchange between the strongly Ising-like Ce moments below 7 K. Neutron diffraction directly confirms magnetic order with an incommensurate propagation vector k ~ (0.28, 0, 0.19) at 1.6 K, which points to the importance of further neighbor magnetic interactions in this system. The presence of a two-step magnetic-field-induced phase transition along c axis further suggests magnetic frustration in the ground state. Our findings provide a novel material platform hosting a coexistence of itinerant electron and frustrated magnetism in a vdW system, where exotic phenomena arising from rich interplay between spin, charge and lattice in low dimension can be explored.
Layered van-der-Waals 2D magnetic materials are of great interest in fundamental condensed-matter physics research, as well as for potential applications in spintronics and device physics. We present neutron powder diffraction data using new ultra-high-pressure techniques to measure the magnetic structure of Mott-insulating 2D honeycomb antiferromagnet FePS$_3$ at pressures up to 183 kbar and temperatures down to 80 K. These data are complemented by high-pressure magnetometry and reverse Monte Carlo modeling of the spin configurations. As pressure is applied, the previously-measured ambient-pressure magnetic order switches from an antiferromagnetic to a ferromagnetic interplanar interaction, and from 2D-like to 3D-like character. The overall antiferromagnetic structure within the $ab$ planes, ferromagnetic chains antiferromagnetically coupled, is preserved, but the magnetic propagation vector is altered from $(0:1:frac{1}{2})$ to $(0:1:0)$, a halving of the magnetic unit cell size. At higher pressures, coincident with the second structural transition and the insulator-metal transition in this compound, we observe a suppression of this long-range-order and emergence of a form of magnetic short-range order which survives above room temperature. Reverse Monte Carlo fitting suggests this phase to be a short-ranged version of the original ambient pressure structure - with a return to antiferromagnetic interplanar correlations. The persistence of magnetism well into the HP-II metallic state is an observation in seeming contradiction with previous x-ray spectroscopy results which suggest a spin-crossover transition.
CeTe3 is a unique platform to investigate the itinerant magnetism in a van der Waals (vdW) coupled metal. Despite chemical pressure being a promising route to boost quantum fluctuation in this system, a systematic study on the chemical pressure effect on Ce3+(4f1) states is absent. Here, we report on the successful growth of a series of Se doped single crystals of CeTe3. We found a fluctuation driven exotic magnetic rotation from the usual easy-axis ordering to an unusual hard-axis ordering. Unlike in localized magnetic systems, near-critical magnetism can increase itinerancy hand-in-hand with enhancing fluctuation of magnetism. Thus, seemingly unstable hard-axis ordering emerges through kinetic energy gain, with the self-consistent observation of enhanced magnetic fluctuation (disorder). As far as we recognize, this order-by-disorder process in fermionic system is observed for the first time within vdW materials. Our finding opens a unique experimental platform for direct visualization of the rich quasiparticle Fermi surface deformation associated with the Fermionic order-by-disorder process. Also, the search for emergent exotic phases by further tuning of quantum fluctuation is suggested as a promising future challenge.
Fe$_{1+x}$Te is a two dimensional van der Waals antiferromagnet that becomes superconducting on anion substitution on the Te site. The parent phase of Fe$_{1+x}$Te is sensitive to the amount of interstitial iron situated between the iron-tellurium layers displaying collinear magnetic order coexisting with low temperature metallic resistivity for small concentrations of interstitial iron $x$ and helical magnetic order for large values of $x$. While this phase diagram has been established through scattering [see for example E. E. Rodriguez $textit{et al.}$ Phys. Rev. B ${bf{84}}$, 064403 (2011) and S. Rossler $textit{et al.}$ Phys. Rev. B ${bf{84}}$, 174506 (2011)], recent scanning tunnelling microscopy measurements [C. Trainer $textit{et al.}$ Sci. Adv. ${bf{5}}$, eaav3478 (2019)] have observed a different magnetic structure for small interstitial iron concentrations $x$ with a significant canting of the magnetic moments along the crystallographic $c$ axis of $theta$=28 $pm$ 3$^{circ}$. In this paper, we revisit the magnetic structure of Fe$_{1.09}$Te using spherical neutron polarimetry and scanning tunnelling microscopy to search for this canting in the bulk phase and compare surface and bulk magnetism. The results show that the bulk magnetic structure of Fe$_{1.09}$Te is consistent with collinear in-plane order ($theta=0$ with an error of $sim$ 5$^{circ}$). Comparison with scanning tunnelling microscopy on a series of Fe$_{1+x}$Te samples reveals that the surface exhibits a magnetic surface reconstruction with a canting angle of the spins of $theta=29.8^{circ}$. We suggest that this is a consequence of structural relaxation of the surface layer resulting in an out-of-plane magnetocrystalline anisotropy. The magnetism in Fe$_{1+x}$Te displays different properties at the surface when the symmetry constraints of the bulk are removed.
Collective excitations of bound electron-hole pairs -- known as excitons -- are ubiquitous in condensed matter, emerging in systems as diverse as band semiconductors, molecular crystals, and proteins. Recently, their existence in strongly correlated electron materials has attracted increasing interest due to the excitons unique coupling to spin and orbital degrees of freedom. The non-equilibrium driving of such dressed quasiparticles offers a promising platform for realizing unconventional many-body phenomena and phases beyond thermodynamic equilibrium. Here, we achieve this in the van der Waals correlated insulator NiPS$_3$ by photoexciting its newly discovered spin-orbit-entangled excitons that arise from Zhang-Rice states. By monitoring the time evolution of the terahertz conductivity, we observe the coexistence of itinerant carriers produced by exciton dissociation and the long-wavelength antiferromagnetic magnon that coherently precesses in time. These results demonstrate the emergence of a transient metallic state that preserves long-range antiferromagnetism, a phase that cannot be reached by simply tuning the temperature. More broadly, our findings open an avenue toward the exciton-mediated optical manipulation of magnetism.
We present comprehensive measurements of the structural, magnetic and electronic properties of layered van-der-Waals ferromagnet VI$_3$ down to low temperatures. Despite belonging to a well studied family of transition metal trihalides, this material has received very little attention. We outline, from high-resolution powder x-ray diffraction measurements, a corrected room-temperature crystal structure to that previously proposed and uncover a structural transition at 79 K, also seen in the heat capacity. Magnetization measurements confirm VI$_3$ to be a hard ferromagnet (9.1 kOe coercive field at 2 K) with a high degree of anisotropy, and the pressure dependence of the magnetic properties provide evidence for the two-dimensional nature of the magnetic order. Optical and electrical transport measurements show this material to be an insulator with an optical band gap of 0.67 eV - the previous theoretical predictions of d-band metallicity then lead us to believe VI$_3$ to be a correlated Mott insulator. Our latest band structure calculations support this picture and show good agreement with the experimental data. We suggest VI$_3$ to host great potential in the thriving field of low-dimensional magnetism and functional materials, together with opportunities to study and make use of low-dimensional Mott physics.