Tunneling transport of mono- and few-layers magnetic van der Waals MnPS3

Abstract

We have investigated the tunneling transport of mono-and few-layers of MnPS3 by using conductive atomic force microscopy. Due to the band alignment of indium tin oxide/MnPS3/Pt-Ir tip junction, the key features of both Schottky junction and Fowler-Nordheim tunneling (FNT)were observed for all the samples with varying thickness. Using the FNT model and assuming the effective electron mass (0.5 me) of MnPS3, we estimate the tunneling barrier height to be 1.31 eV and the dielectric breakdown strength as 5.41 MV/cm. The discovery of graphene and its rich physics subsequently unearthed have literally revolutionized the field of van der Waals (vdW) materials and the list of newly found vdW systems are exploding at a fast pace 1-3 . However, it became clear soon after the initial discovery that although the zero band gap of graphene renders the associated physic fascinating, at the same time it poses serious problems for potential applications using graphene. This realization has driven more recent searches for vdW materials with a sizeable band gap such as hexagonal boron nitride and transition metal di-chalcogenides (TMDCs). 4 Upon close inspection of the ever growing list of the vdW materials, however one can take an immediate note of the fact that there is hardly any magnetic vdW system in the list, with the only a

Layer-Dependent Interfacial Transport and Optoelectrical Properties of MoS2 on Ultraflat Metals

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Linear Magnetoelectric Phase in Ultrathin MnPS3 Probed by Optical Second Harmonic Generation

“…3(b)]. Based on previously published atomic force microscopy data on MnPS 3 [24], these correspond to 7 and 16 single layers of MnPS 3 respectively. Figure 3(c) shows typical SHG-RA patterns obtained from these flakes at a temperature of 10 K, compared with both thicker (75 nm) flakes and the bare substrate.…”

Electric-field control of magnetism in a few-layered van der Waals ferromagnetic semiconductor

“…Among the variety of vdW materials, layered magnetic compounds are of particular interest thanks to the enriched spin-related physics in the system. [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] For example, the long-standing Mermin-Wagner restriction [18] has been recently lifted in the monolayer limit in CrI 3 , which shows Ising ferromagnetism despite of the zero out-of-plane dimensionality [19,20]. Previous studies on few-layered vdW magnets have also manifested much promising physical phenomena, including the observation of spin-resolved Raman modes, [21,22] the spin waves measured by neutron scattering, [23] potential applications in spinvlaves, [24] as well as the synthesis of new magnetic semiconductors by doping non-magnetic vdW crystals.…”