High-temperature ferromagnetism and strong $\pi$-conjugation feature in two-dimensional manganese tetranitride

TL;DR

This paper predicts a stable two-dimensional manganese tetranitride monolayer with high-temperature ferromagnetism and strong $$-conjugation, suggesting potential for next-generation electronic devices.

Contribution

It introduces a novel 2D ferromagnetic material with high Curie temperature, stability confirmed by phonon and molecular dynamics simulations, and explains ferromagnetism via -d conjugation.

Findings

High Curie temperature of 247 K predicted.

Structural stability confirmed by phonon spectra.

Strong -d conjugation underpins ferromagnetism.

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) magnetic materials have attracted tremendous research interest because of the promising application in the next-generation microelectronic devices. Here, by the first-principles calculations, we propose a two-dimensional ferromagnetic material with high Curie temperature, manganese tetranitride MnN$_4$ monolayer, which is a square-planar lattice made up of only one layer of atoms. The structure is demonstrated to be stable by the phonon spectra and the molecular dynamic simulations, and the stability is ascribed to the $\pi$-d conjugation between $\pi$ orbital of N=N bond and Mn $d$ orbital. More interestingly, the MnN$_4$ monolayer displays robust 2D ferromagnetism, which originates from the strong exchange couplings between Mn atoms due to the $\pi$-d conjugation. The high critical temperature of 247 K is determined by solving the Heisenberg model with the Monte Carlo method.