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

该项目旨在实现“设计师磁性”的冒险目标，基于二维磁性材料提供的灵活性和功能性。将不同的范德华材料和磁体连接在一起，不仅对其本身具有重要意义，而且还可以作为创建目标自旋电子功能的平台，为调整磁相互作用和排序趋势以及实现新的量子态和相提供了几乎无限的可能性。我们将在薄膜几何中实现二维磁性材料和异质结构。这不仅对释放其器件应用潜力至关重要，而且还将为外延工程提供新的可能性，这在其他材料系统或使用剥离的2D材料中是无法实现的。我们的外延和全真空合成和表征方法将为研究使用先进光谱工具创建的二维磁性材料开辟新的途径。通过这一点，我们将获得对这些层状系统中微观磁相互作用和激发如何在超薄极限下被修改的急需的基本理解，在超薄极限下，传统磁探针（如中子散射）的应用变得不可能或不切实际。反过来，这有望在我们对低维磁性的基本理解上迈出一步，并通过这一点为一系列新的自旋电子和量子技术铺平道路。

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.