Electrical switching of magnetic order in an orbital Chern insulator

H. Polshyn, J. Zhu, M. A. Kumar, Y. Zhang, F. Yang, C. L. Tschirhart, M. Serlin, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, A. H. MacDonald and A. F. Young ()
Additional contact information
H. Polshyn: University of California, Santa Barbara
J. Zhu: University of Texas
M. A. Kumar: University of California, Santa Barbara
Y. Zhang: University of California, Santa Barbara
F. Yang: University of California, Santa Barbara
C. L. Tschirhart: University of California, Santa Barbara
M. Serlin: University of California, Santa Barbara
K. Watanabe: National Institute for Materials Science
T. Taniguchi: National Institute for Materials Science
A. H. MacDonald: University of Texas
A. F. Young: University of California, Santa Barbara

Nature, 2020, vol. 588, issue 7836, 66-70

Abstract: Abstract Magnetism typically arises from the joint effect of Fermi statistics and repulsive Coulomb interactions, which favours ground states with non-zero electron spin. As a result, controlling spin magnetism with electric fields—a longstanding technological goal in spintronics and multiferroics1,2—can be achieved only indirectly. Here we experimentally demonstrate direct electric-field control of magnetic states in an orbital Chern insulator3–6, a magnetic system in which non-trivial band topology favours long-range order of orbital angular momentum but the spins are thought to remain disordered7–14. We use van der Waals heterostructures consisting of a graphene monolayer rotationally faulted with respect to a Bernal-stacked bilayer to realize narrow and topologically non-trivial valley-projected moiré minibands15–17. At fillings of one and three electrons per moiré unit cell within these bands, we observe quantized anomalous Hall effects18 with transverse resistance approximately equal to h/2e2 (where h is Planck’s constant and e is the charge on the electron), which is indicative of spontaneous polarization of the system into a single-valley-projected band with a Chern number equal to two. At a filling of three electrons per moiré unit cell, we find that the sign of the quantum anomalous Hall effect can be reversed via field-effect control of the chemical potential; moreover, this transition is hysteretic, which we use to demonstrate non-volatile electric-field-induced reversal of the magnetic state. A theoretical analysis19 indicates that the effect arises from the topological edge states, which drive a change in sign of the magnetization and thus a reversal in the favoured magnetic state. Voltage control of magnetic states can be used to electrically pattern non-volatile magnetic-domain structures hosting chiral edge states, with applications ranging from reconfigurable microwave circuit elements to ultralow-power magnetic memories.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2963-8

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