2021/01/01 by M. Gibertini, Zhe Wang, Ignacio Gutiérrez-Lezama +9
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #2D Materials and Applications #Condensed matter physics #Conductance #Curie temperature #Ferromagnetism #Graphene research and applications #Magnetic field #Magnetism #Magnetization #Magnetoresistance #Materials science #Physics #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum mechanics #Quantum tunnelling #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #van der Waals force
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41467-021-26973-7
published as Nat Commun 12, 6659 (2021)
arxiv created 2021/06/26 · openalex publication_date 2021/11/18 · arxiv updated 2021/11/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract Recent experiments on van der Waals antiferromagnets have shown that measuring the temperature ( T ) and magnetic field ( H ) dependence of the conductance allows their magnetic phase diagram to be mapped. Similarly, experiments on ferromagnetic CrBr 3 barriers enabled the Curie temperature to be determined at H = 0, but a precise interpretation of the magnetoconductance data at H ≠ 0 is conceptually more complex, because at finite H there is no well-defined phase boundary. Here we perform systematic transport measurements on CrBr 3 barriers and show that the tunneling magnetoconductance depends on H and T exclusively through the magnetization M ( H , T ) over the entire temperature range investigated. The phenomenon is reproduced by the spin-dependent Fowler–Nordheim model for tunneling, and is a direct manifestation of the spin splitting of the CrBr 3 conduction band. Our analysis unveils a new approach to probe quantitatively different properties of atomically thin ferromagnetic insulators related to their magnetization by performing simple conductance measurements.