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The exceedingly strong two-dimensional ferromagnetism in bi-atomic layer SrRuO3 with a critical conduction transition

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Abstract

In recent years, few-layer or even monolayer ferromagnetic materials have drawn a great deal of attention due to the promising integration of two-dimensional (2D) magnets into next-generation spintronic devices. The SrRuO3 monolayer is a rare example of stable 2D magnetism under ambient conditions, but only weak ferromagnetism or antiferromagnetism has been found. The bi-atomic layer SrRuO3 as another environmentally inert 2D magnetic system has been paid less attention heretofore. Here we study both the bi-atomic layer and monolayer SrRuO3 in (SrRuO3)n/(SrTiO3)m (n = 1, 2) superlattices in which the SrTiO3 serves as a non-magnetic and insulating space layer. Although the monolayer exhibits arguably weak ferromagnetism, we find that the bi-atomic layer exhibits exceedingly strong ferromagnetism with a Tc of 125 K and a saturation magnetization of 1.2 µB/Ru, demonstrated by both superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometry and element-specific X-ray circular dichroism. Moreover, in the bi-atomic layer SrRuO3, we demonstrate that random fluctuations and orbital reconstructions inevitably occurring in the 2D limit are critical to the electrical transport, but are much less critical to the ferromagnetism. Our study demonstrates that the bi-atomic layer SrRuO3 is an exceedingly strong 2D ferromagnetic oxide which has great potentials for applications of ultracompact spintronic devices.

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Acknowledgements

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 52072244 and 12104305), the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (No. 21JC1405000), and the ShanghaiTech Startup Fund. This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract (No. DE-AC02-06CH11357) and the Advanced Light Source, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility under Contract (No. DE-AC02-05CH11231).

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  1. Jingxian Zhang, Long Cheng, and Hui Cao contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Jingxian Zhang

  2. School of Physical Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, 201210, China

    Long Cheng, Mingrui Bao, Aidi Zhao & Xiaofang Zhai

  3. Materials Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, 60439, USA

    Hui Cao

  4. Instrument Center for Physical Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Jiyin Zhao & Xuguang Liu

  5. X-ray Science Division, Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, 60439, USA

    Yongseong Choi & Hua Zhou

  6. Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    Padraic Shafer

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  1. Jingxian Zhang
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  2. Long Cheng
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Correspondence to Long Cheng or Xiaofang Zhai.

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Zhang, J., Cheng, L., Cao, H. et al. The exceedingly strong two-dimensional ferromagnetism in bi-atomic layer SrRuO3 with a critical conduction transition. Nano Res. 15, 7584–7589 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4392-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4392-5

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