Tunneling current-controlled spin states in few-layer van der Waals magnets

ZhuangEn Fu; Piumi I Samarawickrama; John Ackerman; Yanglin Zhu; Zhiqiang Mao; Kenji Watanabe; Takashi Taniguchi; Wenyong Wang; Yuri Dahnovsky; Mingzhong Wu; TeYu Chien; Jinke Tang; Allan H MacDonald; Hua Chen; Jifa Tian

doi:10.1038/s41467-024-47820-5

Tunneling current-controlled spin states in few-layer van der Waals magnets

Nat Commun. 2024 May 1;15(1):3630. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-47820-5.

Authors

ZhuangEn Fu^{1

2}, Piumi I Samarawickrama^{1

2}, John Ackerman³, Yanglin Zhu⁴, Zhiqiang Mao⁴, Kenji Watanabe⁵, Takashi Taniguchi⁶, Wenyong Wang^{1

2}, Yuri Dahnovsky^{1

2}, Mingzhong Wu⁷, TeYu Chien^{1

2}, Jinke Tang^{1

2}, Allan H MacDonald⁸, Hua Chen⁹, Jifa Tian^{10

11}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, 82071, USA.
² Center for Quantum Information Science and Engineering, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, 82071, USA.
³ Department of Chemical Biomedical Engineering, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, 82071, USA.
⁴ Department of Physics, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16801, USA.
⁵ Research Center for Electronic and Optical Materials, National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, 305-0044, Japan.
⁶ Research Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics, National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, 305-0044, Japan.
⁷ Department of Physics and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
⁸ Department of Physics, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712, USA.
⁹ Department of Physics and School of Advanced Materials Discovery, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, 80523, USA. huachen@colostate.edu.
¹⁰ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, 82071, USA. jtian@uwyo.edu.
¹¹ Center for Quantum Information Science and Engineering, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, 82071, USA. jtian@uwyo.edu.

Abstract

Effective control of magnetic phases in two-dimensional magnets would constitute crucial progress in spintronics, holding great potential for future computing technologies. Here, we report a new approach of leveraging tunneling current as a tool for controlling spin states in CrI₃. We reveal that a tunneling current can deterministically switch between spin-parallel and spin-antiparallel states in few-layer CrI₃, depending on the polarity and amplitude of the current. We propose a mechanism involving nonequilibrium spin accumulation in the graphene electrodes in contact with the CrI₃ layers. We further demonstrate tunneling current-tunable stochastic switching between multiple spin states of the CrI₃ tunnel devices, which goes beyond conventional bi-stable stochastic magnetic tunnel junctions and has not been documented in two-dimensional magnets. Our findings not only address the existing knowledge gap concerning the influence of tunneling currents in controlling the magnetism in two-dimensional magnets, but also unlock possibilities for energy-efficient probabilistic and neuromorphic computing.

Abstract

Grants and funding