Designer metal-free altermagnetism in honeycomb two-dimensional frameworks

TL;DR

This paper presents a molecular design strategy to realize metal-free altermagnetism in 2D honeycomb organic frameworks, enabling electric control of spin transport with robustness against magnetic fields.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to achieve organic altermagnets by symmetry reduction in triangulene-derived radicals, demonstrating strong spin splitting and magnetic properties.

Findings

Strong antiferromagnetic coupling of -130 meV

D-wave spin splitting of 17 meV at the M point

Biaxial strain enhances spin splitting to 27 meV

Abstract

Altermagnetism combines momentum-dependent spin splitting of opposite-spin channels with zero net magnetization, enabling electric-field control of spin transport that is robust against external magnetic fields. Although widely explored in inorganic systems, metal-free altermagnets with pi-spin splitting, particularly in two-dimensional organic frameworks, have remained elusive. Here, we introduce a molecular design strategy that achieves designer metal-free altermagnetism in honeycomb 2D crystals. By reducing the monomer point-group symmetry from D3h to C2v in triangulene-derived radicals, inversion symmetry is selectively broken while the bipartite lattice is preserved. Spin-polarized density-functional-theory calculations reveal strong antiferromagnetic couplings of -130 meV, d-wave spin splitting of 17 meV at the M point, and Mott-Hubbard gaps of 1.26 eV, all fully consistent with Lieb's theorem. A minimal tight-binding model shows that anisotropic nearest-neighbor hopping arising from direction-dependent pi-orbital overlap is the microscopic origin of spin splitting and altermagnetism. Biaxial compressive strain further enhances the spin splitting to 27 meV. These results establish a general approach to room-temperature organic altermagnets and open a pathway toward carbon-based altermagnetism via engineered inversion-symmetry breaking.