Atomic-scale visualization of multiferroicity in monolayer NiI${}_2$

Abstract

Progress in layered van der Waals materials has resulted in the discovery of ferromagnetic and ferroelectric materials down to the monolayer limit. Recently, evidence of the first purely two-dimensional multiferroic material was reported in monolayer NiI${}_2$. However, probing multiferroicity with scattering-based and optical bulk techniques is challenging on 2D materials, and experiments on the atomic scale are needed to fully characterize the multiferroic order at the monolayer limit. Here, we use scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) supported by theoretical calculations based on density functional theory (DFT) to probe and characterize the multiferroic order in monolayer NiI${}_2$. We demonstrate that the type-II multiferroic order displayed by NiI${}_2$, arising from the combination of a magnetic spin spiral order and a strong spin-orbit coupling, allows probing the multiferroic order in the STM experiments. Moreover, we directly probe the magnetoelectric coupling of NiI${}_2$ by external electric field manipulation of the multiferroic domains. Our findings establish a novel point of view to analyse magnetoelectric effects at the microscopic level, paving the way towards engineering new multiferroic orders in van der Waals materials and their heterostructures.

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Cited by in corpus (19)

• Competing multiferroic phases in monolayer and few-layer NiI${}_2$
• Evidence of Ferroelectricity in an Antiferromagnetic Vanadium Trichloride Monolayer
• Magnetoelectric effect in van der Waals magnets
• Electric field control of moiré skyrmion phases in twisted multiferroic NiI${}_2$ bilayers
• Nature of the unconventional heavy fermion Kondo state in monolayer CeSiI
• Multiferroic nematic d-wave altermagnetism driven by orbital-order on the honeycomb lattice
• Enhanced magnetoelectric coupling in two-dimensional hybrid multiferroic heterostructures
• Bulk Photovoltaic Effects in Helimagnets
• Strain-tunable magnetic and magnonic states in Ni-dihalide monolayers
• Multicomponent magneto-orbital order and magneto-orbitons in monolayer VCl3
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• Proximity effect and p-wave superconductivity in s-wave superconductor/helimagnet heterostructures
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• Moiré spintronics: Emergent phenomena, material realization and machine learning accelerating discovery
• Atomic imaging of 2D transition metal dihalides
• Strain-Induced Half-Metallicity and Giant Wiedemann-Franz Violation in Monolayer NiI${}_2$
• Sizable Ligand-Mediated Bond-Dependent Interactions in a Spin-1 Triangular Antiferromagnet NiI${}_2$
• Dimensional crossover and local strain induced deflection of the spin spiral state in multiferroic NiI2
• Electrical probe of spin-spiral order in quantum spin Hall/spin-spiral magnet van der Waals heterostructures