Spin Photovoltaic Effect in Magnetic van der Waals Heterostructures

Abstract

The development of van der Waals (vdW) crystals and their heterostructures has created a fascinating platform for exploring optoelectronic properties in the two-dimensional (2D) limit. With the recent discovery of 2D magnets, the control of the spin degree of freedom can be integrated to realize 2D spin-optoelectronics with spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking. Here, we report spin photovoltaic effects in vdW heterostructures of atomically thin magnet chromium triiodide (CrI3) sandwiched by graphene contacts. In the absence of a magnetic field, the photocurrent displays a distinct dependence on light helicity, which can be tuned by varying the magnetic states and photon energy. Circular polarization-resolved absorption measurements reveal that these observations originate from magnetic-order-coupled and thus helicity-dependent charge-transfer exciton states. The photocurrent displays multiple plateaus as the magnetic field is swept, which are associated with different spin configurations enabled by the layered antiferromagnetism and spin-flip transitions in CrI3. Remarkably, giant photo-magnetocurrent is observed, which tends to infinity for a small applied bias. Our results pave the way to explore emergent photo-spintronics by engineering magnetic vdW heterostructures.

References in corpus (24)

• Spintronics: Fundamentals and applications
• Layer-dependent Ferromagnetism in a van der Waals Crystal down to the Monolayer Limit
• Discovery of intrinsic ferromagnetism in 2D van der Waals crystals
• The Valley Hall Effect in MoS2 Transistors
• Giant Tunneling Magnetoresistance in Spin-Filter van der Waals Heterostructures
• Probing magnetism in 2D van der Waals crystalline insulators via electron tunneling
• On the origin of magnetic anisotropy in two dimensional CrI${}_3$
• Very Large Tunneling Magnetoresistance in Layered Magnetic Semiconductor CrI${}_3$
• Suppression of magnetic ordering in XXZ-type antiferromagnetic monolayer NiPS3
• Generation and Electric Control of Spin-Coupled Valley Current in WSe2
• Ligand-field helical luminescence in a 2D ferromagnetic insulator
• One million percent tunnel magnetoresistance in a magnetic van der Waals heterostructure
• Magnetically Switchable Light-Matter Interaction in the Two-Dimensional Magnet CrI3
• A molecular-spin photovoltaic device
• Spin direction controlled electronic band structure in two dimensional ferromagnetic CrI3
• Voltage Control of a van der Waals Spin-Filter Magnetic Tunnel Junction
• Highly Anisotropic Excitons and Multiple Phonon Bound States in a Van der Waals Antiferromagnetic Insulator
• Physical origin of giant excitonic and magneto-optical responses in two-dimensional ferromagnetic insulators
• Spin-Induced Linear Polarization of Excitonic Emission in Antiferromagnetic van der Waals Crystals
• Graphene/$\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$: An Emergent 2D Plasmonic Interface
• Evidence for charge transfer and proximate magnetism in graphene/a-RuCl_3 heterostructures
• Spin-split band hybridization in graphene proximitized with $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$ nanosheets
• Manipulating Spin-polarized Photocurrent in 2D Transition Metal Dichalcogenides
• Modulation Doping via a 2d Atomic Crystalline Acceptor

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Dynamical correlations in single-layer CrI${}_3$