Coexistence of ferroelectricity and antiferroelectricity in 2D van der Waals multiferroic.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 39366986.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-53019-5 and PMC identifier 11452644.
- 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
Multiferroic materials have been intensively pursued to achieve the mutual control of electric and magnetic properties. The breakthrough progress in 2D magnets and ferroelectrics encourages the exploration of low-dimensional multiferroics, which holds the promise of understanding inscrutable magnetoelectric coupling and inventing advanced spintronic devices. However, confirming ferroelectricity with optical techniques is challenging in 2D materials, particularly in conjunction with antiferromagnetic orders in single- and few-layer multiferroics. Here, we report the discovery of 2D vdW multiferroic with out-of-plane ferroelectric polarization in trilayer NiI<sub>2</sub> device, as revealed by scanning reflective magnetic circular dichroism microscopy and ferroelectric hysteresis loops. The evolution between ferroelectric and antiferroelectric phases has been unambiguously observed. Moreover, the magnetoelectric interaction is directly probed by magnetic control of the multiferroic domain switching. This work opens up opportunities for exploring multiferroic orders and multiferroic physics at the limit of single or few atomic layers, and for creating advanced magnetoelectronic devices.