Magnetic domains and domain wall pinning in atomically thin CrBr3 revealed by nanoscale imaging

Qi-Chao Sun (), Tiancheng Song, Eric Anderson, Andreas Brunner, Johannes Förster, Tetyana Shalomayeva, Takashi Taniguchi, Kenji Watanabe, Joachim Gräfe, Rainer Stöhr (), Xiaodong Xu and Jörg Wrachtrup
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Qi-Chao Sun: University of Stuttgart
Tiancheng Song: University of Washington
Eric Anderson: University of Washington
Andreas Brunner: University of Stuttgart
Johannes Förster: Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems
Tetyana Shalomayeva: University of Stuttgart
Takashi Taniguchi: National Institute for Materials Science
Kenji Watanabe: National Institute for Materials Science
Joachim Gräfe: Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems
Rainer Stöhr: University of Stuttgart
Xiaodong Xu: University of Washington
Jörg Wrachtrup: University of Stuttgart

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract The emergence of atomically thin van der Waals magnets provides a new platform for the studies of two-dimensional magnetism and its applications. However, the widely used measurement methods in recent studies cannot provide quantitative information of the magnetization nor achieve nanoscale spatial resolution. These capabilities are essential to explore the rich properties of magnetic domains and spin textures. Here, we employ cryogenic scanning magnetometry using a single-electron spin of a nitrogen-vacancy center in a diamond probe to unambiguously prove the existence of magnetic domains and study their dynamics in atomically thin CrBr3. By controlling the magnetic domain evolution as a function of magnetic field, we find that the pinning effect is a dominant coercivity mechanism and determine the magnetization of a CrBr3 bilayer to be about 26 Bohr magnetons per square nanometer. The high spatial resolution of this technique enables imaging of magnetic domains and allows to locate the sites of defects that pin the domain walls and nucleate the reverse domains. Our work highlights scanning nitrogen-vacancy center magnetometry as a quantitative probe to explore nanoscale features in two-dimensional magnets.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-22239-4

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