We demonstrate room-temperature ferromagnetism with in-plane magnetic anisotropy in thin flakes of the CrTe2 van der Waals ferromagnet. Using quantitative magnetic imaging with a single spin magnetometer based on a nitrogen-vacancy defect in diamond, we infer a room-temperature in-plane magnetization in the range of M∼27 kA/m for flakes with thicknesses down to 20 nm. In addition, our measurements indicate that the orientation of the magnetization is not determined solely by shape anisotropy in micron-sized CrTe2 flakes, which suggest the existence of a non-negligible magnetocrystalline anisotropy. These results make CrTe2 a unique system in the growing family of van der Waals ferromagnets, as it is the only material platform known to date which offers an intrinsic in-plane magnetization and a Curie temperature above 300 K in thin flakes.
@article{arxiv.2011.05722,
title = {Characterization of room-temperature in-plane magnetization in thin flakes of CrTe$_2$ with a single spin magnetometer},
author = {F. Fabre and A. Finco and A. Purbawati and A. Hadj-Azzem and N. Rougemaille and J. Coraux and I. Philip and V. Jacques},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.05722},
year = {2021}
}