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A room temperature polar magnetic metal

Hongrui Zhang1,*,†, Yu-Tsun Shao2,*, Rui Chen1,3,*, Xiang Chen3,4,*, Sandhya Susarla1,3, David Raftrey3,5, Jonathan T. Reichanadter4,6, Lucas Caretta1, Xiaoxi Huang1 et al.

Nicholas S. Settineri6, Zhen Chen2, Jingcheng Zhou1, Edith Bourret-Courchesne3, Peter Ercius7, Jie Yao1,3, Peter Fischer3,5, Jeffrey B. Neaton3,4,8, David A. Muller2,9, Robert J. Birgeneau3,4, and Ramamoorthy Ramesh1,3,4,‡

  • 1Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
  • 2School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14850, USA
  • 3Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
  • 4Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
  • 5Physics Department, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA
  • 6Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
  • 7The Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
  • 8Kavli Energy Nanosciences Institute at Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
  • 9Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14850, USA

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †Corresponding author: hongruizhang@berkeley.edu
  • ‡rramesh@berkeley.edu
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Phys. Rev. Materials 6, 044403 – Published 6 April, 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.6.044403

Abstract

The emergence of long-range magnetic order in noncentrosymmetric compounds has stimulated interest in the possibility of exotic spin transport phenomena and topologically protected spin textures for applications in next-generation spintronics. Polar magnets, with broken symmetries of spatial inversion and time reversal, usually host chiral spin textures. This work reports on a wurtzite-structure polar magnetic metal, identified as AA′-stacked (Fe0.5Co0.5)5GeTe2, which exhibits a Néel-type skyrmion lattice as well as a Rashba-Edelstein effect at room temperature. Atomic resolution imaging of the structure reveals a structural transition as a function of Co-substitution, leading to the emergence of the polar phase at 50% Co. This discovery reveals an unprecedented layered polar magnetic system for investigating intriguing spin topologies, and it ushers in a promising new framework for spintronics.

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Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

synopsis

Elusive Polar Magnetic Metal Found

Published 6 April, 2022

A newly discovered material offers a platform to study exotic spin structures and transport mechanisms that could be relevant to future spin-based electronic devices.

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Phys. Rev. Materials 6, 044403– Published 6 April, 2022
  • Received 16 October 2021
  • Accepted 8 March 2022
Article part of CHORUS
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