Nonvolatile electric field control of magnetism in bilayer <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:msub><mml:mi>CrI</mml:mi><mml:mn>3</mml:mn></mml:msub></mml:math> on monolayer <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mi>In</mml:mi><mml:mn>2</mml:mn></mml:msub><mml:msub><mml:mi>Se</mml:mi><mml:mn>3</mml:mn></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:math>
Haixia Cheng, Jun Zhou, Cong Wang, Wei Ji, Yanning Zhang
Abstract
Electrical control of magnetism is of great interest for low-energy-consumption spintronic applications. Here, via first-principles calculations, we propose a van der Waals (vdW) multiferroic heterostructure composed of a magnetic ${\mathrm{CrI}}_{3}$ bilayer and a ferroelectric \ensuremath{\alpha}-${\mathrm{In}}_{2}{\mathrm{Se}}_{3}$ monolayer substrate. Interestingly, the interlayer magnetism of bilayer ${\mathrm{CrI}}_{3}$ is switchable between the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic coupling by nonvolatile control of the ferroelectric polarization direction of \ensuremath{\alpha}-${\mathrm{In}}_{2}{\mathrm{Se}}_{3}$. The interlayer magnetic coupling of ${\mathrm{CrI}}_{3}$ bilayer originates from the direct interaction of adjacent I atoms between ${\mathrm{CrI}}_{3}$ monolayers, which can be tuned by the polarization of ${\mathrm{In}}_{2}{\mathrm{Se}}_{3}$, explaining the electrical control of interlayer magnetic phase transition. Our work demonstrates a multiferroelectric material platform by artificially stacking two dimensional vdW layers, providing an effective method for achieving nonvolatile electrical control of atomic-thin vdW ferromagnets.