A New Magnetic Material Leading to Air-stable Two-dimensional Magnets

The emergence of high quality two-dimensional(2D) intrinsic magnetic materials is of vital importance in the development of next generation’s functional devices^[1]. Over the past few years, several 2D magnets, such as VSe₂^[2], MnSe₂^[3]and Fe₃GeTe₂^{[4, 5]}were discovered since the two breakthrough 2D magnets, CrI₃^[6]and Cr₂Ge₂Te₆^[7],mechanically exfoliated from their van-der-Waals parent materials. However, none of the known 2D magnets are air-stable, which limits their practical applications.

In this work, we chemically deintercalated layered ionic compound to an air-stable van-der-Waals material which can be mechanically exfoliated down to thin layers while preserving its magnetic properties. In addition, unlike the materials mentioned above, the material reported here exhibits signs of frustrated magnetism.

Reference:
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3. O'Hara, D.J., et al. Nano Lett, 2018. 18(5): p. 3125-3131.
4. arXiv:1803.02559 [cond-mat.mes-hall].
5. Liu, S., et al.npj 2D Materials and Applications, 2017. 1(1).
6. Huang, B., et al.Nature, 2017. 546(7657): p. 270-273.
7. Gong, C., et al.Nature, 2017. 546(7657): p. 265-269.