Delving into the anisotropic interlayer exchange in bilayer CrI$_3$

TL;DR

This study investigates the anisotropic interlayer exchange interactions, including Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya and Kitaev interactions, in bilayer CrI₃ using advanced computational methods to understand their dependence on stacking and spin-orbit coupling.

Contribution

We developed a novel computational approach to accurately quantify off-diagonal exchange interactions in bilayer CrI₃, revealing the role of ligands and stacking in anisotropic magnetic couplings.

Findings

Weak interlayer Kitaev interaction in monoclinic stacking

Strong Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in monoclinic stacking

Single-ion anisotropy varies significantly with stacking

Abstract

Bilayer CrI$_3$ attracted much attention owing to peculiar switching between the layered ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic order upon stacking alternation. This finding pointed out the importance of the apparently small interlayer exchange, yet, existing literature addresses only its isotropic part. To fill this gap, we combine the density functional theory with Hamiltonian modeling to examine the anisotropic interlayer exchange in bilayer CrI$_3$ - Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DMI) and the Kitaev interaction (KI). We develop and apply a novel computational procedure that yields the off-diagonal exchange matrix elements with $\mu$eV accuracy. Inspecting two types of bilayer stacking, we found a weak interlayer KI and much stronger DMI between the sublattices of monoclinic bilayer and their complete absence in rhombohedral bilayer. We show how these anisotropic interactions depend on the interlayer distance, stacking sequence, and the spin-orbit coupling strength and suggest the dominant superexchange processes at play. In addition, we demonstrate that the single-ion anisotropy largely depends on stacking, increasing by 50% from monoclinic to rhombohedral structure. Remarkably, our findings prove that iodines, owing to their spatially extended 5p orbitals featuring strong spin-orbit coupling, are extremely efficient in mediating DMI across the van der Waals gap in two-dimensional magnetic heterostructures. Given that similar findings were previously demonstrated only in metallic multilayers where the DMI shows a much longer range, our study gives promise that the chiral control of spin textures can be achieved in two-dimensional semiconducting magnetic bilayers whose ligands feature strong spin-orbit coupling.