In-plane magnetic domains and Néel-like domain walls in thin flakes of the room temperature CrTe${}_2$ van der Waals ferromagnet

Abstract

The recent discovery of magnetic van der Waals materials has triggered a wealth of investigations in materials science, and now offers genuinely new prospects for both fundamental and applied research. Although the catalogue of van der Waals ferromagnets is rapidly expanding, most of them have a Curie temperature below 300 K, a notable disadvantage for potential applications. Combining element-selective x-ray magnetic imaging and magnetic force microscopy, we resolve at room temperature the magnetic domains and domains walls in micron-sized flakes of the CrTe${}_2$ van der Waals ferromagnet. Flux-closure magnetic patterns suggesting in-plane six-fold symmetry are observed. Upon annealing the material above its Curie point (315 K), the magnetic domains disappear. By cooling back down the sample, a different magnetic domain distribution is obtained, indicating material stability and lack of magnetic memory upon thermal cycling. The domain walls presumably have Néel texture, are preferentially oriented along directions separated by 120 degrees, and have a width of several tens of nanometers. Besides microscopic mapping of magnetic domains and domain walls, the coercivity of the material is found to be of a few mT only, showing that the CrTe${}_2$ compound is magnetically soft. The coercivity is found to increase as the volume of the material decreases.

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• Multifunctional Two-dimensional van der Waals Janus Magnet Cr-based Dichalcogenide Halides
• Characterization of room-temperature in-plane magnetization in thin flakes of CrTe${}_2$ with a single spin magnetometer
• Tunable magneto-optical effect, anomalous Hall effect and anomalous Nernst effect in two-dimensional room-temperature ferromagnet $1T$-CrTe${}_2$
• Ab initio calculation of the effective Coulomb interactions in MX2 (M=Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni; X=S, Se, Te): intrinsic magnetic ordering and Mott insulating phase
• Large-area van der Waals epitaxy and magnetic characterization of Fe${}_3$GeTe${}_2$ films on graphene
• Wafer-scale epitaxial growth of the thickness-controllable van der Waals ferromagnet CrTe2 for reliable magnetic memory applications
• TaCo${}_2$Te${}_2$: An air-stable, magnetic van der Waals material with high mobility
• Varied magnetic phases in a van der Waals easy-plane antiferromagnet revealed by nitrogen-vacancy center microscopy
• Stability of the In-Plane Room Temperature van der Waals Ferromagnet Chromium Ditelluride and Its Conversion to Chromium-Interleaved CrTe${}_2$ Compounds
• Bilayer orthogonal ferromagnetism in CrTe${}_2$-based van der Waals system
• Tuning the Magnetism in Ultrathin CrxTey Films by Lattice Dimensionality
• Acousto-magnonic spin Hall effect in honeycomb antiferromagnets
• Large ordered moment with strong easy-plane anisotropy and vortex-domain pattern in the kagome ferromagnet Fe${}_3$Sn
• Efficient Soft-Chemical Synthesis of Large van-der-Waals Crystals of the Room-Temperature Ferromagnet 1T-CrTe2
• Magnetic properties of monolayer, multilayer, and bulk CrTe${}_2$
• Quantum microscopy with van der Waals heterostructures
• Laser patterning of the room temperature van der Waals ferromagnet 1$T$-CrTe${}_2$
• Many-body electronic structure, self-doped double-exchange, and Hund metallicity in 1T-CrTe2 bulk and monolayer