Thickness-Dependent and Magnetic-Field-Driven Suppression of Antiferromagnetic Order in Thin V5S8 Single Crystals

With materials approaching the 2D limit yielding many exciting systems with intriguing physical properties and promising technological functionalities, understanding and engineering magnetic order in nanoscale, layered materials is generating keen interest. One such material is V5S8, a metal with an antiferromagnetic ground state below the Néel temperature TN ∼ 32 K and a prominent spin-flop signature in the magnetoresistance (MR) when H∥c ∼ 4.2 T. Here we study nanoscale-thickness single crystals of V5S8, focusing on temperatures close to TN and the evolution of material properties in response to systematic reduction in crystal thickness. Transport measurements just below TN reveal magnetic hysteresis that we ascribe to a metamagnetic transition, the first-order magnetic-field-driven breakdown of the ordered state. The reduction of crystal thickness to ∼10 nm coincides with systematic changes in the magnetic response: TN falls, implying that antiferromagnetism is suppressed; and while the spin-flop signature remains, the hysteresis disappears, implying that the metamagnetic transition becomes second order as the thickness approaches the 2D limit. This work demonstrates that single crystals of magnetic materials with nanometer thicknesses are promising systems for future studies of magnetism in reduced dimensionality and quantum phase transitions.