Abstract
Recent discovered two-dimensional (2D) antiferromagnetic (AFM) van der Waals quantum materials have attracted increasing interest due to the emergent exotic physical phenomena. The spintronic properties utilizing the intrinsic AFM state in 2D antiferromagnets, however, have been rarely found. Here we show that the spin photogalvanic effect (SPGE), which has been predicted in three-dimensional (3D) antiferromagnets, can intrinsically emerge in 2D antiferromagnets for promising spintronic applications. Based on the symmetry analysis of possible AFM orders in the honeycomb lattice, we conclude suitable 2D AFM candidate materials for realizing the SPGE. We choose two experimentally synthesized 2D collinear AFM materials, monolayer MnPS3, and bilayer CrCl3, as representative materials to perform first-principles calculations, and find that they support sizable SPGE. The SPGE in collinear 2D AFM materials can be utilized to generate pure spin current in a contactless and ultra-fast way.
Highlights
Spintronics[1], which exploits the spin degree of freedom of electrons in condensed matters for information storage and processing, has generated persistent interest in both physics and engineering.Conventional spintronics devices are usually constructed by threedimensional (3D) magnetic materials, and their application in nanoscale spintronics is strongly limited by the sizable thickness
We focus on the 2D collinear antiferromagnets with time-reversalcombined-inversion (TbbI) symmetry and weak spin–orbit coupling (SOC) such as Néeltype monolayer MnPS3 and A-type bilayer CrCl3, and demonstrate, based on first-principles calculations, that these materials support sizable spin photogalvanic effect (SPGE)
A collinear AFM material is composed of two FM sublattices with opposite magnetizations
Summary
Spintronics[1], which exploits the spin degree of freedom of electrons in condensed matters for information storage and processing, has generated persistent interest in both physics and engineering. Despite remarkable progress in exploring exotic phenomena in 2D collinear AFM materials[2,3,4,5,6,12], the spintronic properties, such as magnetoresistance effect in CrI34,12 and CrCl313,14 due to the AFM-ferromagnetic transitions, and quantum anomalous effect Hall of MnBi2Te46 induced by a finite magnetization, so far have been restricted to introduce ferromagnetic (FM) orders by strong magnetic fields. These require substantial electric currents and suffer from large energy dissipation. We focus on the 2D collinear antiferromagnets with time-reversalcombined-inversion (TbbI) symmetry and weak SOC such as Néeltype monolayer MnPS3 and A-type bilayer CrCl3, and demonstrate, based on first-principles calculations, that these materials support sizable SPGE
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