Emergent magnetic states due to stacking and strain in the van der Waals magnetic trilayer CrI3

Abstract

Recently, three different magnetic states were observed experimentally in trilayer CrI3 under pressure,including ferromagnetic (FM)-upupup, FM-downupdown and FM-upupdown. To reveal the nature of the observed three magnetic states, we studied the magnetic properties of four possible stacking structures in trilayer CrI3: I (rhombohedral), II (monoclinic), III (hexagonal) and IV (triclinic). We find that all four stacking structures possess the FM-upupup ground state. After applying a few strains, the FM-downupdown becomes the ground state in II and III structures, and the FM-upupdown is preferred in IV structure, while the FM-upupup persists in I structure. Our results unveil that the three magnetic states observed in trilayer CrI3 may correspond to different stacking structures with small tensile strains, which can well interpret the experimentally obtained pressure dependent interlayer coupling and Curie temperature. Our present study paves a way to design the magnetic multilayers with required magnetic states by tuning stacking and strain.

8 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Magnetic 2D materials and heterostructures
• Tuning Chern Number in Quantum Anomalous Hall Insulators
• Strain-Induced Room-Temperature Ferromagnetic Semiconductors with Large Anomalous Hall Conductivity in Two-Dimensional Cr2Ge2Se6
• Great enhancement of Curie temperature and magnetic anisotropy in two-dimensional van der Waals magnetic semiconductor heterostructures
• Electric field induced topological phase transition and large enhancements of spin-orbit coupling and Curie temperature in two-dimensional ferromagnetic semiconductors
• Layer-dependent mechanical properties and enhanced plasticity in the van der Waals chromium trihalide magnets
• P-orbital magnetic topological states on square lattice
• Antiferromagnetic and Electric Polarized States in Two-Dimensional Janus Semiconductor Fe2Cl3I3

Cited by in corpus (2)

• The elusive quantum anomalous Hall effect in MnBi2Te4: a materials perspective
• Strong effects of uniaxial pressure and short-range correlations in Cr2Ge2Te6