Abstract
The magnetoelectric effect is a fundamental physical phenomenon that synergizes electric and magnetic degrees of freedom to generate distinct material responses like electrically tuned magnetism, which serves as a key foundation of the emerging field of spintronics. Here, we show by first-principles studies that ferroelectric (FE) polarization of an In2Se3 monolayer can modulate the magnetism of an adjacent transition-metal (TM)-decorated graphene layer via a ferroelectrically induced electronic transition. The TM nonbonding d-orbital shifts downward and hybridizes with carbon-p states near the Fermi level, suppressing the magnetic moment, under one FE polarization, but on reversed FE polarization this TM d-orbital moves upward, restoring the original magnetic moment. This finding of robust magnetoelectric effect in the TM-decorated graphene/In2Se3 heterostructure offers powerful insights and a promising avenue for experimental exploration of ferroelectrically controlled magnetism in two-dimensional (2D) materials.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 3033-3039 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Early online date | 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 20 Jan 2021 |
| MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Funding
We acknowledge the grants of high-performance computer time from computing facility at the Queensland University of Technology, the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre and Australian National Computational Infrastructure (NCI). L.K. gratefully acknowledges financial support by the ARC Discovery Project (DP190101607). Y.G. acknowledges ARC Discovery Project (DP200102546).
Keywords
- d-orbital shifts
- ferroelectric-controlled magnetism
- first-principles calculations
- heterostructure
- magnetoelectric effect