English

Valley polarization transition driven by biaxial strain in Janus $\mathrm{GdClF}$ monolayer

Materials Science 2022-01-19 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

Abstract

The valley degrees of freedom of carriers in crystals is useful to process information and perform logic operations, and it is a key factor for valley application to realize the valley polarization. Here, we propose a model that the valley polarization transition at different valley points (-K and K points) is produced by biaxial strain. By the first-principle calculations, we illustrate our idea with a concrete example of Janus GdClF\mathrm{GdClF} monolayer. The predicted GdClF\mathrm{GdClF} monolayer is dynamically, mechanically and thermally stable, and is a ferromagnetic (FM) semiconductor with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA), valence band maximum (VBM) at valley points and high Curie temperature (TCT_C). Due to its intrinsic ferromagnetism and spin orbital coupling (SOC), a spontaneous valley polarization will be induced, but the valley splitting is only -3.1 meV, which provides an opportunity to achieve valley polarization transition at different valley points by strain. In considered strain range (a/a0a/a_0: 0.94\sim1.06), the strained GdClF monolayer has always energy bandgap, strong FM coupling and PMA. The compressive strain is in favour of -K valley polarization, while the tensile strain makes for K valley polarization. The corresponding valley splitting at 0.96 and 1.04 strain are -44.5 meV and 29.4 meV, which are higher than the thermal energy of room temperature (25 meV). Due to special Janus structure, both in-plane and out-of-plane piezoelectric polarizations can be observed. It is found that the direction of in-plane piezoelectric polarizations can be overturned by strain, and the d11d_{11} at 0.96 and 1.04 strain are -1.37 pm/V and 2.05 pm/V. Our works pave the way to design the ferrovalley material as multifunctional valleytronics and piezoelectric devices by strain.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2110.12101,
  title  = {Valley polarization transition driven by biaxial strain in Janus $\mathrm{GdClF}$ monolayer},
  author = {San-Dong Guo and Xiao-Shu Guo and Xiu-Xia Cai and Bang-Gui Liu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.12101},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

9 pages, 10 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2109.13534