Two-dimensional materials with intrinsic functionality are becoming increasingly important in exploring fundamental condensed matter science and for developing advanced technologies. Bulk crystals that can be exfoliated are particularly relevant to these pursuits as they provide the opportunity to study the role of physical dimensionality and explore device physics in highly crystalline samples and designer heterostructures in a routine manner. Magnetism is a key element in these endeavors; however, relatively few cleavable materials are magnetic and none possess magnetic order at ambient conditions. Here, we introduce Fe 5−x GeTe 2 as a cleavable material with ferromagnetic behavior at room temperature. We established intrinsic magnetic order at room temperature in bulk crystals (T C = 310 K) through magnetization measurements and in exfoliated, thin flakes (T C ≈ 280 K) using the anomalous Hall effect. Our work reveals Fe 5 GeTe 2 as a prime candidate for incorporating intrinsic magnetism into functional van der Waals heterostructures and devices near room temperature.

A quantum spin liquid (QSL) is an exotic state of matter in which electrons' spins are quantum entangled over long distances, but do not show symmetry-breaking magnetic order in the zero-temperature limit [1]. The observation of QSL states is a central aim of experimental physics, because they host collective excitations that transcend our knowledge of quantum matter [2, 3]; however, examples in real materials are scarce [4]. Here, we report neutron-scattering measurements on YbMgGaO 4 , a QSL candidate in which Yb 3+ ions with effective spin-1/2 occupy a triangular lattice [5,6]. Our measurements reveal a continuum of magnetic excitations-the essential experimental hallmark of a QSL [7,8]-at very low temperature (≈ 0.06 K). The origin of this peculiar excitation spectrum is a crucial question, because isotropic nearest-neighbor interactions do not yield a QSL ground state on the triangular lattice [9]. Using measurements of the magnetic excitations close to the field-polarized state, we identify antiferromagnetic next-nearest-neighbor interactions [10,11,12,13,14] in the presence of planar anisotropy[6] as key ingredients for QSL formation in YbMgGaO 4 .1 arXiv:1607.03231v1 [cond-mat.str-el]

2 The Kitaev model on a honeycomb lattice predicts a paradigmatic quantum spin liquid (QSL) exhibiting Majorana Fermion excitations. The insight that Kitaev physics might be realized in practice has stimulated investigations of candidate materials, recently including α-RuCl3. In all the systems studied to date, significant non-Kitaev interactions induce magnetic order at low temperature. However, inplane magnetic fields of roughly 8 Tesla suppress the long-range magnetic order in α-RuCl3 raising the intriguing possibility of a field-induced QSL exhibiting non-Abelian quasiparticle excitations. Here we present inelastic neutron scattering in α-RuCl3 in an applied magnetic field. At a field of 8 Tesla the spin waves characteristic of the ordered state vanish throughout the Brillouin zone. The remaining single dominant feature of the response is a broad continuum centered at the Γ point, previously identified as a signature of fractionalized excitations. This provides compelling evidence that a field-induced QSL state has been achieved. 3 The Kitaev model on a honeycomb lattice [1] has been exactly solved to reveal a unique quantum spin liquid (QSL) exhibiting itinerant Majorana Fermion and gauge-flux excitations. The Kitaev candidate system α-RuCl3 is an insulating magnetic material comprised of van der Waals coupled honeycomb layers of 4d 5 Ru 3+ cations nearly centered in edge-sharing RuCl6 octahedra. A strong cubic crystal field combined with spin-orbit coupling leads to a Kramer's doublet, nearly perfect J = 1/2 ground state [2][3][4], thus satisfying the conditions necessary for producing Kitaev couplings in the low energy Hamiltonian [5]. Similar to the widely studied honeycomb [6] and hyper-honeycomb [7] Iridates, at low temperatures α-RuCl3 exhibits small-moment antiferromagnetic zigzag order [3,[8][9][10][11] with TN ≈ 7 K for crystals with minimal stacking faults. In the zigzag state the magnetic excitation spectrum shows well-defined low-energy spin waves with minima at the M points (See Supplementary Materials (SM) Fig. S1 for the Brillouin Zone (BZ) definition) as well as a broad continuum that extends to much higher energies centered at the Γ points [12,13]. Above TN the spin waves disappear but the continuum remains, essentially unchanged until high temperatures of the order of 100 K [3,12,13]. In analogy with the situation for coupled spin-½ antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chains [14], the high energy part of the continuum has been interpreted as a signature of fractionalized excitations [3,12,13]. The overall features of the inelastic neutron scattering (INS) response resemble those of the Kitaev QSL [15][16][17] and are consistent with an unusual response seen in Raman scattering [16,18,19], suggesting that the system is proximate to a QSL state exhibiting magnetic Majorana fermion excitations [3,12,13]. Magnetic field offers a clean quantum tuning parameter for Kitaev materials [7][8][9]20] and can be applied on large single crystals facilitating INS studies. It is known to suppress the magnetic ord...