Synthesis of stable γ-phase MnS1- xSex nanoflakes with inversion symmetry breaking

Bo Zheng; Jun Fu; Yuanmin Zhu; Jing Liang; Yongzhi She; Junxiang Xiang; Xiang Ma; Ying Zhang; Shasha Wang; Guojing Hu; Yuehui Zhou; Yan Feng; Zhengping Fu; Nan Pan; Yalin Lu; Hualing Zeng; Meng Gu; Kaihui Liu; Bin Xiang

doi:10.1039/d2nr05136b

Synthesis of stable γ-phase MnS_{1- x}Se_x nanoflakes with inversion symmetry breaking

Nanoscale. 2022 Nov 24;14(45):17036-17043. doi: 10.1039/d2nr05136b.

Authors

Bo Zheng¹, Jun Fu², Yuanmin Zhu^{3

4}, Jing Liang⁵, Yongzhi She⁶, Junxiang Xiang¹, Xiang Ma¹, Ying Zhang¹, Shasha Wang¹, Guojing Hu¹, Yuehui Zhou¹, Yan Feng¹, Zhengping Fu¹, Nan Pan⁶, Yalin Lu¹, Hualing Zeng², Meng Gu⁴, Kaihui Liu⁵, Bin Xiang¹

Affiliations

¹ Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, Department of Materials Science & Engineering, CAS Key Lab of Materials for Energy Conversion, Anhui Laboratory of Advanced Photon Science and Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China. binxiang@ustc.edu.cn.
² International Center for Quantum Design of Functional Materials (ICQD), Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Science at the Microscale, and Synergetic Innovation Center of Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, 230026, Hefei, Anhui, People's Republic of China.
³ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Dongguan University of Technology, Dongguan, 523808, China.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology China, Shenzhen, China.
⁵ State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics, Frontiers Science Center for Nano-optoelectronics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, China.
⁶ Department of Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China.

PMID: 36367106
DOI: 10.1039/d2nr05136b

Abstract

Inversion symmetry breaking plays a critical role in the formation of magnetic skyrmions. Therefore, for the application of skyrmion-based devices, it is important to develop novel engineering techniques and explore new non-centrosymmetric lattices. In this paper, we report the rational synthesis of stable γ-phase MnS_1-xSe_x (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.45) nanoflakes with an asymmetric distribution of the elemental content, which persists on inversion symmetry breaking. The temperature dependence of resonant second-harmonic generation characterization reveals that a non-centrosymmetric crystal structure exists in our as-grown γ-phase MnS_1-xSe_x with spatial-inversion symmetry breaking. By tuning the parameters of nucleation temperature and growth time, we produced a detailed growth phase diagram, revealing a controllable as-grown structure evolution from γ-phase wurtzite-type to α-phase rock-salt type structure of MnS_1-xSe_x nanoflakes. Our work provides a new playground to explore novel materials that have broken inversion symmetry.