Control of structure and spin texture in the van der Waals layered magnet CrSBr

J Klein; T Pham; J D Thomsen; J B Curtis; T Denneulin; M Lorke; M Florian; A Steinhoff; R A Wiscons; J Luxa; Z Sofer; F Jahnke; P Narang; F M Ross

doi:10.1038/s41467-022-32737-8

Control of structure and spin texture in the van der Waals layered magnet CrSBr

Nat Commun. 2022 Sep 15;13(1):5420. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-32737-8.

Authors

J Klein¹, T Pham², J D Thomsen², J B Curtis^{3

4}, T Denneulin⁵, M Lorke⁶, M Florian^{6

7}, A Steinhoff⁶, R A Wiscons⁸, J Luxa⁹, Z Sofer⁹, F Jahnke⁶, P Narang¹⁰, F M Ross¹¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA. jpklein@mit.edu.
² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
³ John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁴ Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁵ Ernst Ruska-Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons and Peter Grünberg Institute, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425, Jülich, Germany.
⁶ Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Bremen, P.O. Box 330 440, 28334, Bremen, Germany.
⁷ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
⁸ Department of Chemistry, Columbia University, New York, 10027, NY, USA.
⁹ Department of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Chemistry and Technology Prague, Technická 5, 166 28, Prague 6, Czech Republic.
¹⁰ John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. prineha@seas.harvard.edu.
¹¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA. fmross@mit.edu.

Abstract

Controlling magnetism at nanometer length scales is essential for realizing high-performance spintronic, magneto-electric and topological devices and creating on-demand spin Hamiltonians probing fundamental concepts in physics. Van der Waals (vdW)-bonded layered magnets offer exceptional opportunities for such spin texture engineering. Here, we demonstrate nanoscale structural control in the layered magnet CrSBr with the potential to create spin patterns without the environmental sensitivity that has hindered such manipulations in other vdW magnets. We drive a local phase transformation using an electron beam that moves atoms and exchanges bond directions, effectively creating regions that have vertical vdW layers embedded within the initial horizontally vdW bonded exfoliated flakes. We calculate that the newly formed two-dimensional structure is ferromagnetically ordered in-plane with an energy gap in the visible spectrum, and weak antiferromagnetism between the planes, suggesting possibilities for creating spin textures and quantum magnetic phases.