Fully Electrically Controlled Generation and Switching of Spin-Polarized Currents in van der Waals Multiferroic Heterostructures.
basic_science · Level V
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- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 41631430.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5c05907.
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Abstract
Achieving full electrical control of spin-polarized transport at the nanoscale remains a key challenge for spintronic technologies. Here, we demonstrate that integrating a ferroelectric layer into a ferromagnetic semiconductor sandwich structure enables nonvolatile generation and reversible switching of spin-polarized currents. Taking the Cr<sub>2</sub>Si<sub>2</sub>Te<sub>6</sub>/Sc<sub>2</sub>CO<sub>2</sub>/Cr<sub>2</sub>Ge<sub>2</sub>Te<sub>6</sub> van der Waals multiferroic heterostructure as an example, our first-principles calculations show that by reversing the polarization direction of the intermediate ferroelectric layer, the heterostructure system can flexibly switch between spin-up and spin-down half-metallic states. This functionality originates from polarization-induced band shifts and interfacial charge transfer. Accordingly, the proposed multiferroic device exhibits a fully spin-polarized current with electrically switchable spin orientations and a perfect spin-filtering efficiency. Furthermore, we validated the effectiveness of this strategy in several other lattice-matched multiferroic heterostructures, thereby providing a new class of multiferroic systems with electrically switchable half-metallicity.