Controlling and integrating 2D magnetism in epitaxial van der Waals heterostructures

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This project seeks to realise the adventurous goal of "designer magnetism", based around the flexibility and functionality offered by 2D magnetic materials. Of fundamental importance in its own right, but also as a platform to create targeted spintronic functionality, interfacing different van der Waals materials and magnets together promises almost limitless possibilities for tuning magnetic interactions and ordering tendencies and for realising new quantum states and phases. We will realise 2D magnetic materials and heterostructures in thin film geometries. This is crucial not only to unlock their potential for device applications, but will also advance new possibilities for epitaxial engineering that are not achievable in other material systems or using exfoliated 2D materials. Our epitaxial and all-vacuum based synthesis and characterisation approach will open new routes to studying the 2D magnetic materials created using advanced spectroscopic tools. Through this, we will gain much-needed fundamental understanding of how the microscopic magnetic interactions and excitations at play in these layered systems become modified in the ultra-thin limit, where the application of traditional magnetic probes such as neutron scattering becomes impossible or impractical. This, in turn, promises to deliver a step change in our fundamental understanding of low-dimensional magnetism, and through this to pave the way for a host of new spintronic and quantum technologies.