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From Stoner to local moment magnetism in atomically thin Cr 2 Te 3 .

Yong ZhongCheng PengHaili HuangDandan GuanJinwoong HwangKuan H HsuYi HuChunjing JiaBrian MoritzDong-Hui LuJun-Sik LeeJin-Feng JiaThomas Peter DevereauxSung-Kwan MoZhi-Xun Shen
Published in: Nature communications (2023)
The field of two-dimensional (2D) ferromagnetism has been proliferating over the past few years, with ongoing interests in basic science and potential applications in spintronic technology. However, a high-resolution spectroscopic study of the 2D ferromagnet is still lacking due to the small size and air sensitivity of the exfoliated nanoflakes. Here, we report a thickness-dependent ferromagnetism in epitaxially grown Cr 2 Te 3 thin films and investigate the evolution of the underlying electronic structure by synergistic angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy, x-ray absorption spectroscopy, and first-principle calculations. A conspicuous ferromagnetic transition from Stoner to Heisenberg-type is directly observed in the atomically thin limit, indicating that dimensionality is a powerful tuning knob to manipulate the novel properties of 2D magnetism. Monolayer Cr 2 Te 3 retains robust ferromagnetism, but with a suppressed Curie temperature, due to the drastic drop in the density of states near the Fermi level. Our results establish atomically thin Cr 2 Te 3 as an excellent platform to explore the dual nature of localized and itinerant ferromagnetism in 2D magnets.
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