One Million Percent Tunnel Magnetoresistance in a Magnetic van der Waals Heterostructure

• DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.8b01552
• Publication Date: 2018-07-12T19:44:33Z
• Authors: Hyun Ho Kim; Bowen Yang; Tarun Patel; Francois Sfigakis; Chenghe Li; Shangjie Tian; Hechang Lei; Adam W. Tsen
• Keywords: Condensed Matter - Materials Science; Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci); FOS: Physical sciences; 02 engineering and technology; 0210 nano-technology

We report the observation of a very large negative magnetoresistance effect in a van der Waals tunnel junction incorporating a thin magnetic semiconductor, CrI3, as the active layer. At constant voltage bias, current increases by nearly one million percent upon application of a 2 Tesla field. The effect arises from a change between antiparallel to parallel alignment of spins across the different CrI3 layers. Our results elucidate the nature of the magnetic state in ultrathin CrI3 and present new opportunities for spintronics based on two-dimensional materials.