Giant electrically tunable magnon transport anisotropy in a van der Waals antiferromagnetic insulator

Shaomian Qi; Di Chen; Kangyao Chen; Jianqiao Liu; Guangyi Chen; Bingcheng Luo; Hang Cui; Linhao Jia; Jiankun Li; Miaoling Huang; Yuanjun Song; Shiyi Han; Lianming Tong; Peng Yu; Yi Liu; Hongyu Wu; Shiwei Wu; Jiang Xiao; Ryuichi Shindou; X C Xie; Jian-Hao Chen

doi:10.1038/s41467-023-38172-7

Giant electrically tunable magnon transport anisotropy in a van der Waals antiferromagnetic insulator

Nat Commun. 2023 May 2;14(1):2526. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-38172-7.

Authors

Shaomian Qi^#¹, Di Chen^#², Kangyao Chen¹, Jianqiao Liu¹, Guangyi Chen¹, Bingcheng Luo¹, Hang Cui¹, Linhao Jia^{1

2}, Jiankun Li², Miaoling Huang², Yuanjun Song², Shiyi Han³, Lianming Tong³, Peng Yu⁴, Yi Liu⁵, Hongyu Wu⁶, Shiwei Wu⁷, Jiang Xiao⁷, Ryuichi Shindou¹, X C Xie^{1

8}, Jian-Hao Chen^{9

10

11

12}

Affiliations

¹ International Center of Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, China.
² Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences, Beijing, China.
³ College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.
⁵ Center for Advanced Quantum Studies and Department of Physics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
⁶ Key Laboratory of Magnetic Materials and Devices, Zhejiang Province Key Laboratory of Magnetic Materials and Application Technology, Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ningbo, China.
⁷ Department of Physics and State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
⁸ Hefei National Laboratory, Hefei, China.
⁹ International Center of Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, China. chenjianhao@pku.edu.cn.
¹⁰ Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences, Beijing, China. chenjianhao@pku.edu.cn.
¹¹ Hefei National Laboratory, Hefei, China. chenjianhao@pku.edu.cn.
¹² Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices, Peking University, Beijing, China. chenjianhao@pku.edu.cn.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Anisotropy is a manifestation of lowered symmetry in material systems that have profound fundamental and technological implications. For van der Waals magnets, the two-dimensional (2D) nature greatly enhances the effect of in-plane anisotropy. However, electrical manipulation of such anisotropy as well as demonstration of possible applications remains elusive. In particular, in-situ electrical modulation of anisotropy in spin transport, vital for spintronics applications, has yet to be achieved. Here, we realized giant electrically tunable anisotropy in the transport of second harmonic thermal magnons (SHM) in van der Waals anti-ferromagnetic insulator CrPS₄ with the application of modest gate current. Theoretical modeling found that 2D anisotropic spin Seebeck effect is the key to the electrical tunability. Making use of such large and tunable anisotropy, we demonstrated multi-bit read-only memories (ROMs) where information is inscribed by the anisotropy of magnon transport in CrPS₄. Our result unveils the potential of anisotropic van der Waals magnons for information storage and processing.

Abstract

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