Thickness-Dependent and Magnetic-Field-Driven Suppression of Antiferromagnetic Order in Thin V5S8 Single Crystals

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• 作者：Will J. Hardy ; Jiangtan Yuan ; Hua Guo ; Panpan Zhou ; Jun Lou ; Douglas Natelson
• 刊名：ACS Nano
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：June 28, 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：10
• 期：6
• 页码：5941-5946
• 全文大小：406K
• 年卷期：0
• ISSN：1936-086X

文摘

With materials approaching the 2D limit yielding many exciting systems with intriguing physical properties and promising technological functionalities, understanding and engineering magnetic order in nanoscale, layered materials is generating keen interest. One such material is V₅S₈, a metal with an antiferromagnetic ground state below the Néel temperature T_N ∼ 32 K and a prominent spin-flop signature in the magnetoresistance (MR) when H∥c ∼ 4.2 T. Here we study nanoscale-thickness single crystals of V₅S₈, focusing on temperatures close to T_N and the evolution of material properties in response to systematic reduction in crystal thickness. Transport measurements just below T_N reveal magnetic hysteresis that we ascribe to a metamagnetic transition, the first-order magnetic-field-driven breakdown of the ordered state. The reduction of crystal thickness to ∼10 nm coincides with systematic changes in the magnetic response: T_N falls, implying that antiferromagnetism is suppressed; and while the spin-flop signature remains, the hysteresis disappears, implying that the metamagnetic transition becomes second order as the thickness approaches the 2D limit. This work demonstrates that single crystals of magnetic materials with nanometer thicknesses are promising systems for future studies of magnetism in reduced dimensionality and quantum phase transitions.