Crystallographic and magnetic structures of the VI${}_3$ and LiVI${}_3$ van der Waals compounds

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) layered magnetic materials are generating a great amount of interest for the next generation of electronic devices thanks to their remarkable properties associated to spin dynamics. The recently discovered layered VI${}_3$ ferromagnetic phase belongs to this family, although a full understanding of its properties is limited by an ill-defined crystallographic structure. This is not any longer true. Here, we investigate the VI${}_3$ crystal structure upon cooling using both synchrotron X-ray and neutron powder diffraction and provide structural models for the two structural transitions occurring at 76 K and 32 K. Moreover, we confirm by magnetic measurements that VI${}_3$ becomes ferromagnetic at 50 K and discuss the difficulty of solving its full magnetic structure by neutrons. We equally determined the magnetic properties of our recently reported LiVI${}_3$ phase, which is alike the well-known CrI${}_3$ ferromagnetic phase in terms of electronic and crystallographic structures and found to our surprise an antiferromagnetic behavior with a Néel temperature of 12 K. Such a finding provides extra clues for a better understanding of magnetism in these low dimension compounds. Finally, the easiness of preparing novel Li-based 2D magnetic materials by chemical/electrochemical means opens wide the opportunity to design materials with exotic properties.

References in corpus (4)

• Ferromagnetic van der Waals crystal VI3
• VI3 - a new layered ferromagnetic semiconductor
• Bulk properties of van-der-Waals hard ferromagnet VI3
• Crystal Structures and Phase Transitions of the van-der-Waals Ferromagnet VI3

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Large orbital magnetic moment in VI3
• Magnetic order and its interplay with structure phase transition in van der Waals ferromagnet VI${}_3$
• Two-dimensional ferromagnetic spin-orbital excitations in the honeycomb VI${}_3$
• Probing magnetism in exfoliated VI${}_3$ layers with magnetotransport
• Crystal structure evolution in the van der Waals transition metal trihalides
• Ferromagnetic ferroelectricity due to the Kugel-Khomskii mechanism of the orbital ordering assisted by atomic Hund's second rule effects
• Polaronic and Mott insulating phase of layered magnetic vanadium trihalide VCl3
• Robust intralayer antiferromagnetism and tricriticality in a van der Waals compound: VBr3 case
• Terahertz Magnetic and Lattice Excitations in van der Waals Ferromagnet VI3
• Symmetry breaking in vanadium trihalides
• Lattice and magnetic structure in the van der Waals antiferromagnet VBr3
• Evidence of temperature-dependent interplay between spin and orbital moment in van der Waals ferromagnet VI3
• Angular-Dependent Thermal Hall Effect in a Honeycomb Magnet: Disentangling Kitaev and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interactions
• Ferromagnetic Ferroelectricity due to Orbital Ordering