Very large tunneling magnetoresistance in layered magnetic semiconductor CrI<sub>3</sub>.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 29955066.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-018-04953-8 and PMC identifier 6023911.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Magnetic layered van der Waals crystals are an emerging class of materials giving access to new physical phenomena, as illustrated by the recent observation of 2D ferromagnetism in Cr<sub>2</sub>Ge<sub>2</sub>Te<sub>6</sub> and CrI<sub>3</sub>. Of particular interest in semiconductors is the interplay between magnetism and transport, which has remained unexplored. Here we report magneto-transport measurements on exfoliated CrI<sub>3</sub> crystals. We find that tunneling conduction in the direction perpendicular to the crystalline planes exhibits a magnetoresistance as large as 10,000%. The evolution of the magnetoresistance with magnetic field and temperature reveals that the phenomenon originates from multiple transitions to different magnetic states, whose possible microscopic nature is discussed on the basis of all existing experimental observations. This observed dependence of the conductance of a tunnel barrier on its magnetic state is a phenomenon that demonstrates the presence of a strong coupling between transport and magnetism in magnetic van der Waals semiconductors.