Magnetoelastic Transport-Path Reconstruction and Giant Magnetotransport Responses in a Two-Dimensional...

Nonvolatile magnetotransport in a single magnetic material is usually tied to spin-orbit coupling and therefore rarely exhibits a large ON/OFF ratio. Here we show that this limitation can be overcome through magnetoelastic reconstruction of nonrelativistic real-space transport paths. Using the two-dimensional antiferromagnet FePS3 as a representative system, first-principles quantum transport calculations reveal that charge transport is strongly tied to quasi-one-dimensional zigzag sublattice chains and, under suitable doping, can even become confined to them. Strain lifts the degeneracy among symmetry-related zigzag variants and reorients these transport paths through magnetoelastic coupling. Consequently, both longitudinal and transverse conductivities change dramatically, yielding a giant magnetoelastic magnetoresistance up to 104% and an energy-independent Hall ratio far exceeding spontaneous Hall ratios in conventional magnets. These results establish a route to exploiting symmetry-related magnetic variants and their associated transport paths for high-performance spintronic devices with reconfigurable nonvolatile functionalities.