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Updated: Oct 25, 2025

Fabricating van der Waals Heterostructures with Precise Rotational Alignment
Published on: July 5, 2019
Electric-Field Tunable Magnetism in van der Waals Bilayers with A-Type Antiferromagnetic Order: Unipolar versus
Haifeng Lv1, Yijie Niu2, Xiaojun Wu1,2
1Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.
Abstract:
Uncovering the physics behind the electrical manipulation of low-dimensional magnetic materials remains a fundamental issue in practical application of nanoscale spintronics. Here, we propose a strategy to transform A-type antiferromagnetic (AFM) semiconductors into asymmetric AFM unipolar or bipolar magnetic semiconductors by applying perpendicular electric fields in van der Waals bilayer systems. Electric fields lifting energy levels of electrons within same spin channel from consistent layers in opposite direction enables unipolar magnetic semiconductor, whereas electrons within opposite spin channel enable bipolar magnetic semiconductor. A comprehensive study demonstrates this discrepancy originates from spatial distributions of spin density of valence band and conduction band edges in two layers of systems. The electric field induced unipolar or bipolar magnetic semiconducting behavior represents great potential of nanoscale AFM spintronics for information storage and processing.
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