Near room-temperature ferromagnetism in BixCr1−xTe2 epitaxial thin films grown on GaAs(111)B by molecular beam epitaxy

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) ferromagnetic materials (FMs) are potentially the material foundation for future spintronics devices. However, at present, the Curie temperature (TC) of most 2D FM is relatively low and cannot meet the need for practical applications. Nowadays, CrTe2 thin films grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) are reported to be room-temperature ferromagnetic only on graphene substrate instead of 3D substrates. In this work, we report high-quality Bi-doped CrTe2 (BixCr1−xTe2) thin films grown on conventional substrates of GaAs(111)B by MBE. Magnetotransport measurements reveal strong ferromagnetism of all the films, with out-of-plane magnetic anisotropy. More importantly, as more Bi atoms are doped into the film, the Curie temperature increases and reaches 305 K at x = 0.1. This improvement is a step forward for its application in spintronics and other fields.