Spin Frustration and Unconventional Surface Spin Canting State in Van der Waals Ferromagnet/Antiferromagnet Heterostructures
Abstract
Abstract Atomically flat surfaces of van der Waals (vdW) materials pave an avenue for addressing a long‐standing fundamental issue of how a compensated antiferromagnet (AFM) surface frustrates a ferromagnetic (FM) overlayer in FM/AFM heterostructures. We investigate Fe 5 GeTe 2 /NiPS 3 vdW heterostructures by characterizing AFM and FM spins separately. We find that in‐plane zig‐zag AFM NiPS 3 develops three equivalent AFM domains, which are robust against external magnetic field and magnetic coupling with Fe 5 GeTe 2 . Moreover, evidence is provided of in‐plane‐AFM‐induced perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) in adjacent Fe 5 GeTe 2 , and an unconventional out‐of‐plane surface spin canting state with the Fe 5 GeTe 2 spins spatially turn from out‐of‐plane direction near the interface to in‐plane direction away from the interface in Fe 5 GeTe 2 /NiPS 3 . The out‐of‐plane surface spin canting is a unique property of spin frustration in vdW magnetic heterostructures.
Article Details
Authors (19)
Tianye Wang
Qian Li
Mengmeng Yang
Yu Sun
Alpha T. N'Diaye
Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 7 , Berkeley, California 94720,
Christoph Klewe
Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Andreas Scholl
Xianzhe Chen
Xiaoxi Huang
Hongrui Zhang
Santai Yang
Department of Physics University of California Berkeley CA 94720 USA
Ji‐Eun Lee
Department of Physics University of California Berkeley CA 94720 USA
Dhanvanth Balakrishnan
Department of Physics University of California Berkeley CA 94720 USA
Xixiang Zhang
Material Science and Engineering Program, Division of Physical Science and Engineering, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Chanyong Hwang
Padraic C. Shafer
Materials Sciences Division Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley CA 94720 USA
Michael F. Crommie
Ramamoorthy Ramesh
Rice Advanced Materials Institute
Zi Q. Qiu
Department of Physics University of California Berkeley CA 94720 USA