ﻻ يوجد ملخص باللغة العربية
The recent isolation of two-dimensional van der Waals magnetic materials has uncovered rich physics that often differs from the magnetic behaviour of their bulk counterparts. However, the microscopic details of fundamental processes such as the initial magnetization or domain reversal, which govern the magnetic hysteresis, remain largely unknown in the ultrathin limit. Here we employ a widefield nitrogen-vacancy (NV) microscope to directly image these processes in few-layer flakes of magnetic semiconductor vanadium triiodide (VI$_3$). We observe complete and abrupt switching of most flakes at fields $H_capprox0.5-1$ T (at 5 K) independent of thickness down to two atomic layers, with no intermediate partially-reversed state. The coercive field decreases as the temperature approaches the Curie temperature ($T_capprox50$ K), however, the switching remains abrupt. We then image the initial magnetization process, which reveals thickness-dependent domain wall depinning fields well below $H_c$. These results point to ultrathin VI$_3$ being a nucleation-type hard ferromagnet, where the coercive field is set by the anisotropy-limited domain wall nucleation field. This work illustrates the power of widefield NV microscopy to investigate magnetization processes in van der Waals ferromagnets, which could be used to elucidate the origin of the hard ferromagnetic properties of other materials and explore field- and current-driven domain wall dynamics.
The van der Waals heterostructures are a fertile frontier for discovering emergent phenomena in condensed matter systems. They are constructed by stacking elements of a large library of two-dimensional materials, which couple together through van der
The science and applications of electronics and optoelectronics have been driven for decades by progress in growth of semiconducting heterostructures. Many applications in the infrared and terahertz frequency range exploit transitions between quantiz
Current-induced control of magnetization in ferromagnets using spin-orbit torque (SOT) has drawn attention as a new mechanism for fast and energy efficient magnetic memory devices. Energy-efficient spintronic devices require a spin-current source wit
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
The designer approach has become a new paradigm in accessing novel quantum phases of matter. Moreover, the realization of exotic states such as topological insulators, superconductors and quantum spin liquids often poses challenging or even contradic