Tunneling current-controlled spin states in few-layer van der Waals magnets

ZhuangEn Fu; Piumi I. Samarawickrama; John Ackerman; Yanglin Zhu; Zhiqiang Mao; Kenji Watanabe; Takashi Taniguchi; Wenyong Wang; Yuri Dahnovsky; Mingzhong Wu; TeYu Chien; Jinke Tang; Allan H. MacDonald; Hua Chen; Jifa Tian

doi:10.1038/s41467-024-47820-5

Journal article Tunneling current-controlled spin states in few-layer van der Waals magnets

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ZhuangEn Fu, Piumi I. Samarawickrama, John Ackerman, Yanglin Zhu, Zhiqiang Mao, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Wenyong Wang, Yuri Dahnovsky, Mingzhong Wu, TeYu Chien, Jinke Tang, Allan H. MacDonald, Hua Chen, Jifa Tian. Tunneling current-controlled spin states in few-layer van der Waals magnets. Nature Communications. 2024, 15 (1), 3630. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-47820-5

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Effective control of magnetic phases in two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) magnets would constitute crucial progress in spintronics, which holds great potential for future computing technologies. Here, we report a new approach of leveraging tunneling current as a tool for control of spin configurations in few-layer CrI3. We reveal, for the first time, that a tunneling current can deterministically switch between spin-parallel and spin-antiparallel states in few-layer vdW magnets. We propose a mechanism involving nonequilibrium spin accumulation in the graphene electrodes. We further demonstrate tunneling current-tunable stochastic switching between multiple spin states, which goes beyond conventional bi-stable stochastic magnetic tunnel junctions and has not been previously documented in 2D vdW magnets. Our findings not only address the existing knowledge gap concerning the influence of tunneling currents in 2D vdW magnets, but also unlock possibilities for high density energy-efficient nanoscale logic gates and probabilistic and neuromorphic computing.

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