Magnetism and Piezoelectricity in Stable Transition Metal Silicate Monolayers

TL;DR

This study predicts stable 2D transition metal silicate monolayers that exhibit both ferromagnetism and piezoelectricity, offering a new class of multiferroic materials with potential for flexible electronic applications.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new class of stable, air-resistant 2D transition metal silicates with tunable magnetic and piezoelectric properties, synthesized via ab-initio calculations.

Findings

Materials are stable under varying oxygen conditions.

They exhibit finite out-of-plane piezoelectric response.

Can be tailored to be ferrimagnetic with a net magnetic moment.

Abstract

Two-dimensional van der Waals (2D vdW) materials that display ferromagnetism and piezoelectricity have received increased attention. Despite numerous 2D materials have so far been reported as ferromagnetic, developing an air stable and transferable vdW material that is multiferroic has been challenging. To address this problem, we report our work on layered transition metal silicates that are derivatives of kaolinites and lizardites with transition metal substituting on Al$^{3+}$ and Mg$^{2+}$ sites using ab-initio calculations. Using Density Functional Theory (DFT), we show that these compounds are stable under varying O$_2$ partial pressure and can be synthesized using a surface assisted method. We show that these materials have finite out-of-plane piezoelectric response thanks to the lack of inversion symmetry and also they can be tailored to be ferrimagnetic with a non-zero net moment.