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Coupling between magnetic order and charge transport in a two-dimensional magnetic semiconductor

Nature Materials volume 21, pages 754–760 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Semiconductors, featuring tunable electrical transport, and magnets, featuring tunable spin configurations, form the basis of many information technologies. A long-standing challenge has been to realize materials that integrate and connect these two distinct properties. Two-dimensional (2D) materials offer a platform to realize this concept, but known 2D magnetic semiconductors are electrically insulating in their magnetic phase. Here we demonstrate tunable electron transport within the magnetic phase of the 2D semiconductor CrSBr and reveal strong coupling between its magnetic order and charge transport. This provides an opportunity to characterize the layer-dependent magnetic order of CrSBr down to the monolayer via magnetotransport. Exploiting the sensitivity of magnetoresistance to magnetic order, we uncover a second regime characterized by coupling between charge carriers and magnetic defects. The magnetoresistance within this regime can be dynamically and reversibly tuned by varying the carrier concentration using an electrostatic gate, providing a mechanism for controlling charge transport in 2D magnets.

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Fig. 1: Crystal structure, device fabrication and transport signatures of CrSBr magnetic ordering.
Fig. 2: Magnetoresistance of bilayer and monolayer CrSBr.
Fig. 3: Evidence for coupling between charge transport and magnetic defects in CrSBr.
Fig. 4: Electrostatic control of magnetoresistance in monolayer CrSBr.

Data availability

The data that support the plots within this Article and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Pack for his help in using the double-axis rotator for the field-direction-dependent transport measurements. We thank T.-D. Li for help performing the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements. We also thank J. Xiao for helpful discussions in interpreting our transport data. Research on magnetotransport properties of van der Waals magnetic semiconductors was supported as part of Programmable Quantum Materials, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, under award DE-SC0019443. Neutron scattering experiments were performed at the Spallation Neutron Source, a Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility operated by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. A.H.D. was supported by the National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship programme (DGE 16-44869). R.A.W. was supported by the Arnold O. Beckman Fellowship in Chemical Sciences. The Columbia University Shared Materials Characterization Laboratory was used extensively for this research. We are grateful to Columbia University for the support of this facility. The PPMS system used to perform vibrating sample magnetometry and some of the transport measurements was purchased with financial support from the National Science Foundation through a supplement to award DMR-1751949. The electron microscopic work performed at Brookhaven National Laboratory was sponsored by the US Department of Energy, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division, under contract no. DE-SC0012704. The X-ray photoelectron microscopy was performed at the Surface Science Core Facility in Advanced Science Research Center of City University of New York.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Evan J. Telford, Avalon H. Dismukes, Ren A. Wiscons, Kihong Lee, Daniel G. Chica, Michael E. Ziebel, Jessica Yu, Colin Nuckolls, Xiaoyang Zhu & Xavier Roy

  2. Department of Physics, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Evan J. Telford, Raymond L. Dudley, Sara Shabani, Abhay N. Pasupathy & Cory R. Dean

  3. Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA

    Myung-Geun Han, Yimei Zhu & Abhay N. Pasupathy

  4. Neutron Scattering Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA

    Allen Scheie

  5. Research Center for Functional Materials, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan

    Kenji Watanabe

  6. International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics, National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan

    Takashi Taniguchi

  7. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Di Xiao

  8. Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Di Xiao

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  1. Evan J. Telford
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Contributions

E.J.T. and A.H.D. prepared the CrSBr flakes. E.J.T. and A.H.D. performed the optical contrast calibration and atomic force microscopy measurements. E.J.T. and R.L.D. fabricated the transport devices and performed the transport measurements. A.H.D. synthesized the bulk crystals. E.J.T. and K.L. performed the Raman spectroscopy measurements. E.J.T., A.H.D. and R.A.W. performed the vibrating sample magnetometry measurements. E.J.T. performed the oxidation measurements. M.-G.H. and Y.Z. performed the transmission electron microscopy imaging. S.S. and A.N.P. performed the scanning tunnelling microscopy measurements. A.H.D. and E.J.T. performed the scanning electron microscopy imaging and energy-dispersive X-ray analysis. All authors contributed to analysing the data and writing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Cory R. Dean or Xavier Roy.

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Nature Materials thanks Ahmet Avsar and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–31 and Discussion.

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Telford, E.J., Dismukes, A.H., Dudley, R.L. et al. Coupling between magnetic order and charge transport in a two-dimensional magnetic semiconductor. Nat. Mater. 21, 754–760 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-022-01245-x

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