Abstract
Interfaces are ubiquitous in materials science, and in devices in particular. As device dimensions are constantly shrinking, understanding the physical properties emerging at interfaces is crucial to exploit them for applications, here for spintronics. Using first-principles techniques and Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the mutual magnetic interaction at the interface between graphene and an antiferromagnetic semiconductor BaMnO3. We find that graphene deeply affects the magnetic state of the substrate, down to several layers below the interface, by inducing an overall magnetic softening, and switching the in-plane magnetic ordering from antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic. The graphene-BaMnO3 system presents a Rashba gap 300 times larger than in pristine graphene, leading to a flavor of quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE), a hybrid QAHE, characterized by the coexistence of metallic and topological insulating states. These findings could be exploited to fabricate devices that use graphene to control the magnetic configuration of a substrate.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 155404 |
| Journal | Physical Review B |
| Volume | 98 |
| Issue number | 15 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 5 Oct 2018 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
The authors acknowledge constructive discussions with J. Varignon and L. Plucinski. Z.Z. acknowledges financial support by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Grant No. ZA 780/3-1, the Ramon y Cajal MINECO program (Grant No. RYC-2016-19344), the EC H2020-EINFRA-5-2015 MaX Center of Excellence (Grant No. 676598), the Spanish MINECO (Grant No. FIS2015-64886-C5-3-P), the CERCA programme of the Generalitat de Catalunya (Grant No. 2017SGR1506), and by the Severo Ochoa programme (MINECO, Grant No. SEV-2013-0295). M.J.V. acknowledges funding from the Communauté française de Belgique ARC grant (Grant No. AIMED 15/19-09). Y.M. acknowledges funding from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), Grant No. MO 1731/5-1. This work has been also financially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through the Collaborative Research Center SPP 1666. The authors acknowledge computer time from the PRACE-3IP and 4IP on resources Lindgren, Archer, and Salomon (EU Grants No. RI-312763 and No. 653838), CECI, SEGI-ULg and Zenobe hosted by CENAERO (Grant No. GA 1117545), the JARA-HPC projects (No. jara0088, No. JIAS16, and No. JHPC39), the JARA-HPC Vergabegremium and VSR commission on the supercomputer JURECA at Forschungszentrum Jülich.