Antiferromagnetic (AFM) van der Waals (vdW) materials provide a novel platform for synthetic AFM spintronics, in which the spin-related functionalities are derived from manipulating spin configurations between the layers. Metallic vdW antiferromagnets are expected to have several advantages over the widely-studied insulating counterparts in switching and detecting the spin states through electrical currents but have been much less explored due to the lack of suitable materials. Here, utilizing the extreme sensitivity of the vdW interlayer magnetism to material composition, we report the itinerant antiferromagnetism in Co-doped Fe4GeTe2 with TN ~ 210 K, an order of magnitude increased as compared to other known AFM vdW metals. The resulting spin configurations and orientations are sensitively controlled by doping, magnetic field, temperature, and thickness, which are effectively read out by electrical conduction. These findings manifest strong merits of metallic vdW magnets with tunable interlayer exchange interaction and magnetic anisotropy, suitable for AFM spintronic applications.
@article{arxiv.2004.12650,
title = {Tailoring high-TN interlayer antiferromagnetism in a van der Waals itinerant magnet},
author = {Junho Seo and Eun Su An and Taesu Park and Soo-Yoon Hwang and Gi-Yeop Kim and Kyung Song and Eunseok Oh and Minhyuk Choi and Kenji Watanabe and Takashi Taniguchi and Youn Jung Jo and Han Woong Yeom and Si-Young Choi and Ji Hoon Shim and Jun Sung Kim},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.12650},
year = {2020}
}