Proximity Effect and Tunability of Magnetic Behavior of 2-Dimensional van der Waals Magnets and Their Heterostructures

2-dimensional van der Waals magnetic materials have attracted immense attraction of researchers due to the possibility of studying fundamental physics at low dimensions as well as possibility of tuning new functionalities in multilayer heterostructures. Due to the weak van der Waals interactions between the layers, clean interfaces in heterostrctures can be obtained relatively easily offering opportunities to study the intrinsic effects in such artificially created materials (heterostructures). Such design criteria can be used to study magnetism in nonmagnetic materials due to proximity effect, several quantum effects such as spin splitting, valley polarization, etc., devices directly relevant for practical applications such as magnetic tunnel junctions and explore novel functionalities [1,2]. A few experiments have shown evidences of topologically protected spin textures such as magnetic skyrmions in 2D magnets and their heterostructures with materials of strong spin orbit coupling [3,4]. In this talk, I will primarily discuss our recent results on the proximity effect studied for heterostrtcures of graphene-2D magnets such as Fe₃GeTe₂, Cr₂Ge₂Te₆ as well as effect of spin orbit coupling on their switching behavior. Our results highlight the tunability of magnetic behavior observed in the heterostrutcures.

References: [1] Gong and Zhang, Science 363, eaav4450 (2019).
[2] L. Zhang et al., Appl. Phys. Rev., 8, 021308 (2021).
[3] Y. Wu, et al. Nat Commun 11, 3860 (2020).
[4] S. Fragkos et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 120, 182402 (2022).

Acknowldegement: This work is partially supported by Indo-French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research (IFCPAR/CEFIPRA) through grant no. 6508-2/2021 and Science and Engineering Research Board, Govt. of India through grant no. SPR/2021/000762.