Coexistence of structural and magnetic phases in van der Waals magnet CrI3

Jaume Meseguer-Sánchez, Catalin Popescu, José Luis García-Muñoz, Hubertus Luetkens, Grigol Taniashvili, Efrén Navarro-Moratalla (), Zurab Guguchia () and Elton J. G. Santos ()
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Jaume Meseguer-Sánchez: Universitat de Valéncia
Catalin Popescu: CELLS-ALBA Synchrotron Light Facility
José Luis García-Muñoz: Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB), CSIC
Hubertus Luetkens: Paul Scherrer Institute
Grigol Taniashvili: Tbilisi State University
Efrén Navarro-Moratalla: Universitat de Valéncia
Zurab Guguchia: Paul Scherrer Institute
Elton J. G. Santos: The University of Edinburgh

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

Abstract: Abstract CrI3 has raised as an important system to the emergent field of two-dimensional van der Waals magnetic materials. However, it is still unclear why CrI3 which has a ferromagnetic rhombohedral structure in bulk, changed to anti-ferromagnetic monoclinic at thin layers. Here we show that this behaviour is due to the coexistence of both monoclinic and rhombohedral crystal phases followed by three magnetic transitions at TC1 = 61 K, TC2 = 50 K and TC3 = 25 K. Each transition corresponds to a certain fraction of the magnetically ordered volume as well as monoclinic and rhombohedral proportion. The different phases are continuously accessed as a function of the temperature over a broad range of magnitudes. Our findings suggest that the challenge of understanding the magnetic properties of thin layers CrI3 is in general a coexisting structural-phase problem mediated by the volume-wise competition between magnetic phases already present in bulk.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-26342-4

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