Controlling 2-D magnetism with stacking order

Date posted
Funding Agency
(Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation)

Researchers at MIT and collaborators have demonstrated that they can alter the magnetic properties of chromium trichloride – an ultra-thin material that features a honeycomb-shaped atomic structure — by shifting the stacking order of layers. The researchers peeled away two-dimensional (2-D) layers of chromium trichloride using and found that the magnetism is different in 2-D and 3-D crystals, due to different stacking arrangements between atoms in adjacent layers.