Electric-field induced half-metal in monolayer CrSBr

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel electric-field tuning mechanism to induce half-metallicity in 2D ferromagnetic CrSBr monolayers, supported by first-principles calculations, with potential applications in spintronic devices.

Contribution

It introduces a new electric-field based method to achieve half-metallicity in 2D ferromagnetic materials, demonstrated on CrSBr monolayer using first-principles calculations.

Findings

Half-metallicity achieved in CrSBr monolayer under electric field.

Constructed Janus monolayer $ ext{Cr}_2 ext{S}_2 ext{BrI}$ with built-in electric field.

Potential for spintronic nanodevices based on CrSBr.

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) half-metallic materials are highly desirable for nanoscale spintronic applications. Here, we propose a new mechanism that can achieve half-metallicity in 2D ferromagnetic (FM) material with two-layer magnetic atoms by electric field tuning. We use a concrete example of experimentally synthesized CrSBr monolayer to illustrate our proposal through the first-principle calculations. It is found that the half-metal can be achieved in CrSBr within appropriate electric field range, and the corresponding amplitude of electric field intensity is available in experiment. Janus monolayer $\mathrm{Cr_2S_2BrI}$ is constructed, which possesses built-in electric field due to broken horizontal mirror symmetry. However, $\mathrm{Cr_2S_2BrI}$ without and with applied external electric field is always a FM semiconductor. A possible memory device is also proposed based on CrSBr monolayer. Our works will stimulate the application of 2D FM CrSBr in future spintronic nanodevices.