Monolayer Vanadium-doped Tungsten Disulfide: A Room-Temperature Dilute Magnetic Semiconductor
Abstract
Dilute magnetic semiconductors, achieved through substitutional doping of spin-polarized transition metals into semiconducting systems, enable experimental modulation of spin dynamics in ways that hold great promise for novel magneto-electric or magneto-optical devices, especially for two-dimensional systems such as transition metal dichalcogenides that accentuate interactions and activate valley degrees of freedom. Practical applications of 2D magnetism will likely require room-temperature operation, air stability, and (for magnetic semiconductors) the ability to achieve optimal doping levels without dopant aggregation. Here we describe room-temperature ferromagnetic order obtained in semiconducting vanadium-doped tungsten disulfide monolayers produced by a reliable single-step film sulfidation method across an exceptionally wide range of vanadium concentrations, up to 12 at% with minimal dopant aggregation. These monolayers develop p-type transport as a function of vanadium incorporation and rapidly reach ambipolarity. Ferromagnetism peaks at an intermediate vanadium concentration of a few atomic percent and decreases for higher concentrations, which is consistent with quenching due to orbital hybridization at closer vanadium-vanadium spacings, as supported by transmission electron microscopy, magnetometry and first-principles calculations. Room-temperature two-dimensional dilute magnetic semiconductors provide a new component to expand the functional scope of van der Waals heterostructures and bring semiconducting magnetic 2D heterostructures them into the realm of practical application.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2005.01965,
title = {Monolayer Vanadium-doped Tungsten Disulfide: A Room-Temperature Dilute Magnetic Semiconductor},
author = {Fu Zhang and Boyang Zheng and Amritanand Sebastian and Hans Olson and Mingzu Liu and Kazunori Fujisawa and Yen Thi Hai Pham and Valery Ortiz Jimenez and Vijaysankar Kalappattil and Leixin Miao and Tianyi Zhang and Rahul Pendurthi and Yu Lei and Ana Laura Elías and Yuanxi Wang and Nasim Alem and Patrick E. Hopkins and Saptarshi Das and Vincent H. Crespi and Manh-Huong Phan and Mauricio Terrones},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.01965},
year = {2020}
}