Amilcar Bedoya-Pinto1
Universitat de València1
In this talk, I will focus on the van-der-Waals epitaxy of a nearly-ideal two-dimensional magnet, a CrCl<sub>3</sub> monolayer grown on Graphene/6H-SiC(0001). <i>In-situ</i> X-ray magnetic circular dichroism reveals intrinsic ferromagnetic order with easy-plane anisotropy and a 2DXY universality class [1], indicating the realization of a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transition in a quasi-freestanding monolayer magnet. The important role of the van der Waals substrate interaction and the underlying crystal symmetry will be discussed, thereby highlighting routes on how to control the anisotropy of 2D magnets via growth engineering. Moreover, the crucial role of a robust easy-plane anisotropy for the emergence of in-plane topological spin textures -merons and anti-merons- will be showcased for monolayer CrCl3, both from a theoretical and experimental perspective.