Magnetoelectric Coupling in 2D heterostructures of In₂Se₃ and Fe₅GeTe₂

The coupling between magnetic and electric order, magnetoelectric (ME) coupling, has steadily gained interest in the past couple of decades in part for the promise in low power computing applications. Artificial MEs rely on interfacial coupling between magnetic and ferroelectric materials instead of both orders being present within a single crystal as seen in single-phase MEs.  2D Van Der Waal materials stacked on top of each other provide a promising choice for ME heterostructures as lattice mismatched induced strain is not a concern as it is in grown thin film systems such as the oxide ferromagnetic La_1-xSr_xMnO₃ based superlattices. In this work, we explore ME coupling between the 2D ferroelectric In₂Se₃ (IS) and 2D ferromagnet Fe₅GeTe₂ (F5GT). In₂Se₃ is a popular 2D ferroelectric with both in-plane and out-of-plane ferroelectric order in it’s alpha phase and Fe₅GeTe₂ demonstrates complex out-of-plane magnetic order up to room temperature including the existence of both meron and skyrmion spin textures. We characterize electric transport through both the semiconducting IS and conducting F5GT layers via different device geometries of bi-layers and F5GT/IS/F5GT tri-layers. This allows us to explore both the ferroelectric control of magnetization in F5GT as well as potential magnetic proximity effects from the F5GT into the IS. We demonstrate electric gating dependencies of anomalous Hall loops in the F5GT and magnetic field dependencies in the semiconducting transport of the IS.