A two-dimensional manganese gallium nitride surface structure showing ferromagnetism at room temperature

Y. MA; A. CHINCHORE; A. SMITH; MARÍA ANDREA BARRAL; VALERIA FERRARI

NANO LETTERS (PRINT)

AMER CHEMICAL SOC

Lugar: Washington; Año: 2018 vol. 18 p. 158 - 166

1530-6984

Practical applications of semiconductor spintronic devices necessitate ferromagnetic behavior at or above room temperature. In this paper, we demonstrate a two-dimensional manganese gallium nitride surface structure (MnGaN-2D) which is atomically thin and shows ferromagnetic domain structure at room temperature as measured by spin-resolved scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy. Application of small magnetic fields proves that the observed magnetic domains follow a hysteretic behavior. Two initially oppositely oriented MnGaN-2D domains are rotated into alignment with only 120 mT and remain mostly in alignment at remanence. The measurements are further supported by first-principles theoretical calculations which reveal highly spin-polarized and spin-split surface states with spin polarization of up to 95% for manganese local density of states.