Moiré-driven multiferroic order in twisted CrCl${}_3$, CrBr${}_3$ and CrI${}_3$ bilayers

Abstract

Layered van der Waals materials have risen as a powerful platform to engineer artificial competing states of matter. Here we show the emergence of multiferroic order in twisted chromium trihalide bilayers, an order fully driven by the moiré pattern and absent in aligned multilayers. Using a combination of spin models and ab initio calculations, we show that a spin texture is generated in the moiré supercell of the twisted system as a consequence of the competition between stacking-dependent interlayer magnetic exchange and magnetic anisotropy. An electric polarization arises associated with such a non-collinear magnetic state due to the spin-orbit coupling, leading to the emergence of a local ferroelectric order following the moiré. Among the stochiometric trihalides, our results show that twisted CrBr${}_3$ bilayers give rise to the strongest multiferroic order. We further show the emergence of a strong magnetoelectric coupling, which allows the electric generation and control of magnetic skyrmions. Our results put forward twisted chromium trihalide bilayers, and in particular CrBr${}_3$ bilayers, as a powerful platform to engineer artificial multiferroic materials and electrically tunable topological magnetic textures.

5+3 pages, 4 figures, supplemental material

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Cited by in corpus (17)

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• Multiple antiferromagnetic phases and magnetic anisotropy in exfoliated CrBr${}_3$ multilayers
• Programmable Magnetic Hysteresis in Orthogonally-Twisted Two-Dimensional CrSBr Magnets via Stacking Engineering
• Thermal Hall effect in a van der Waals ferromagnet CrI3
• Moire magnetism in CrBr3 multilayers emerging from differential strain
• Roadmap on Quantum Magnetic Materials
• Emergence of stable meron quartets in twisted magnets
• Creating a three dimensional intrinsic electric dipole on rotated CrI${}_3$ bilayers
• Electric field control of moiré skyrmion phases in twisted multiferroic NiI${}_2$ bilayers
• Multiferroic nematic d-wave altermagnetism driven by orbital-order on the honeycomb lattice
• Controllable magnetic domains in twisted trilayer magnets
• Multicomponent magneto-orbital order and magneto-orbitons in monolayer VCl3
• Deep learning methods for Hamiltonian parameter estimation and magnetic domain image generation in twisted van der Waals magnets
• Interlayer superexchange in bilayer chromium trihalides
• Magnetic Moiré Systems: a review
• Moiré spintronics: Emergent phenomena, material realization and machine learning accelerating discovery