Chromium sulfide bromide crystallizes into skinny layers that may be peeled aside and stacked to create nanoscale units. Columbia researchers found that this materials’s digital and magnetic properties are linked collectively—a discovery that might allow basic analysis in addition to potential purposes in spintronics. Credit: Myung-Geun Han and Yimei Zhu
Information in computer systems is transmitted by means of semiconductors by the motion of electrons and saved within the course of the electron spin in magnetic supplies. To shrink units whereas enhancing their efficiency—a objective of an rising area referred to as spin-electronics (“spintronics”)—researchers are trying to find distinctive supplies that mix each quantum properties. Writing in Nature Materials, a staff of chemists and physicists at Columbia finds a robust hyperlink between electron transport and magnetism in a cloth referred to as chromium sulfide bromide (CrSBr).
Created within the lab of Chemist Xavier Roy, CrSBr is a so-called van der Waals crystal that may be peeled into stackable, 2D layers which might be only a few atoms skinny. Unlike associated supplies which might be rapidly destroyed by oxygen and water, CrSBr crystals are steady at ambient situations. These crystals additionally preserve their magnetic properties on the comparatively excessive temperature of -280F, avoiding the necessity for costly liquid helium cooled to a temperature of -450F,
“CrSBr is infinitely simpler to work with than different 2D magnets, which lets us fabricate novel units and check their properties,” mentioned Evan Telford, a postdoc within the Roy lab who graduated with a PhD in physics from Columbia in 2020. Last yr, colleagues Nathan Wilson and Xiaodong Xu on the University of Washington and Xiaoyang Zhu at Columbia discovered a hyperlink between magnetism and the way CrSBr responds to mild. In the present work, Telford led the hassle to discover its digital properties.
The staff used an electrical area to check CrSBr layers throughout totally different electron densities, magnetic fields, and temperatures—totally different parameters that may be adjusted to supply totally different results in a cloth. As digital properties in CrSBr modified, so did its magnetism.
“Semiconductors have tunable digital properties. Magnets have tunable spin configurations. In CrSBr, these two knobs are mixed,” mentioned Roy. “That makes CrSBr engaging for each basic analysis and for potential spintronics utility.”
Magnetism is a tough property to measure instantly, significantly as the scale of the fabric shrinks, defined Telford, nevertheless it’s straightforward to measure how electrons transfer with a parameter referred to as resistance. In CrSBr, resistance can function a proxy for in any other case unobservable magnetic states. “That’s very {powerful},” mentioned Roy, particularly as researchers look to at some point construct chips out of such 2D magnets, which could possibly be used for quantum computing and to retailer huge quantities of knowledge in a small house.
The hyperlink between the fabric’s digital and magnetic properties was as a consequence of defects within the layers—for the staff, a fortunate break, mentioned Telford. “People normally need the ‘cleanest’ materials doable. Our crystals had defects, however with out these, we would not have noticed this coupling,” he mentioned.
From right here, the Roy lab is experimenting with methods to develop peelable van der Waals crystals with deliberate defects, to enhance the flexibility to fine-tune the fabric’s properties. They are additionally exploring whether or not totally different mixtures of components might operate at larger temperatures whereas nonetheless retaining these invaluable mixed properties.
Visualising atomic construction and magnetism of 2-D magnetic insulators
More info:
Evan J. Telford et al, Coupling between magnetic order and cost transport in a two-dimensional magnetic semiconductor, Nature Materials (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41563-022-01245-x
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Unique quantum materials might allow ultra-powerful, compact computer systems (2022, May 20)
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