Above-room-temperature ferromagnetism in large-area epitaxial Fe3GaTe2/graphene van der Waals heterostructures

TL;DR

This study reports the successful large-scale epitaxial growth of Fe3GaTe2/graphene heterostructures with ferromagnetism above room temperature, advancing 2D spintronic device potential.

Contribution

It demonstrates the first high-quality, large-area epitaxial growth of Fe3GaTe2 on graphene, enabling practical 2D ferromagnetic heterostructures.

Findings

Achieved epitaxial Fe3GaTe2 growth on graphene/SiC templates.

Observed Curie temperature up to 400 K with strong perpendicular magnetic anisotropy.

Validated high crystalline quality and magnetic properties through structural and spectroscopic analyses.

Abstract

Fe3GaTe2 (FGaT), a two-dimensional (2D) layered ferromagnetic metal, exhibits a high Curie temperature (TC) ~ 360 K along with strong perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA), making it a promising material candidate for next-generation energy-efficient magnetic devices. However, the vast majority of studies on FGaT to date have been limited to millimeter-sized bulk crystals and exfoliated flakes, which are unsuitable for practical applications and integration into device processing. Also, its combination with other 2D materials to form van der Waals heterostructures has only been achieved by flake stacking. Consequently, the controlled large-scale growth of FGaT and related heterostructures remains largely unexplored. In this work, we demonstrate a breakthrough in the high-quality, large-scale growth of epitaxial FGaT thin films on single-crystalline graphene/SiC templates using molecular beam epitaxy. Structural characterization confirms the high crystalline quality of the continuous FGaT/graphene van der Waals heterostructures. Temperature-dependent magnetization and anomalous Hall measurements reveal robust PMA with an enhanced TC well above room temperature, reaching up to 400 K. Furthermore, X-ray absorption and X-ray magnetic circular dichroism spectra provide insight into the spin and orbital magnetic moment contributions, further validating the high TC and robust PMA. These findings are highly significant for the future development of high-performance spintronic devices based on 2D heterostructures, with potential applications in next-generation data storage, logic processing and quantum technologies.