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technical paper
Asymmetric Magnetic Proximity Interactions in Ferromagnet/Semiconductor van der Waals Heterostructures
The ability of short-range proximity interactions to imbue magnetic functionality into otherwise nonmagnetic materials 1-3 has exciting prospects for devices that combine the optical and electrical properties of monolayer semiconductors with additional magnetic tuning parameters that couple directly to spin and valley pseudospin. The atomically-smooth surfaces that are nowadays routinely achieved with van der Waals (vdW) materials allow for nearly ideal interfaces between monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenide semiconductors (such as WSe2 or MoS2) and magnetic substrates (such as EuO or CrI3). Magnetic proximity interactions (MPIs) between atomically-thin semiconductors and two-dimensional magnets therefore provide a means to manipulate spin and valley degrees of freedom in nonmagnetic monolayers, without the use of applied magnetic fields.
In such vdW heterostructures, MPIs originate in the nanometer-scale coupling between the spin-dependent electronic wavefunctions in the two materials, and historically their overall effect is regarded as an effective magnetic field acting on the semiconductor monolayer. Here we demonstrate that this picture, while appealing, is incomplete: The effects of MPIs in vdW heterostructures can be markedly asymmetric, in contrast to that from an applied magnetic field 4. Valley-resolved optical reflection spectroscopy of MoSe2/CrBr3 vdW structures reveals strikingly different energy shifts in the K and K' valleys of the MoSe2, due to ferromagnetism in the CrBr3 layer. Strong asymmetry is observed at both the A- and B-exciton resonances. Density-functional calculations indicate that valley-asymmetric MPIs depend sensitively on the spin-dependent hybridization of overlapping bands, and as such are likely a general feature of such hybrid vdW structures. These studies suggest routes to selectively control specific spin and valley states in monolayer semiconductors.
References 1 I. Zutic et al., Proximitized Materials, Materials Today, 22, 85 (2019).
2 M. Gibertini et al., Magnetic 2D materials and heterostructures, Nat. Nanotechnol. 14, 408–419 (2019).
3 K. F. Mak, J. Shan, D. Ralph, Probing and controlling magnetic states in 2D layered magnetic materials, Nat. Rev. Phys. 1, 646-661 (2019).
4 J. Choi, C. Lane, J.-X. Zhu, S. A. Crooker, Asymmetric magnetic proximity interactions in MoSe2/CrBr3 van der Waals heterostructures, arXiv:2206.09958