2D Magnetic Materials and Devices

Magnetism has revolutionized a wide spectrum of technologies such as data storage and biomedical imaging and continues to bring forth new phenomena in emergent materials of reduced dimensionalities. In 2017, magnetic 2D materials emerged as ideal solid-state platforms where both crystalline structural order and long-range magnetic order coexist and couple in atomic-thin region, which makes the unprecedented experimental explorations of 2D magnetism routinely feasible in numerous laboratories worldwide. Furthermore, the seamless integration of 2D magnets with dissimilar electronic and photonic 2D materials, backed by the already mature techniques on high-quality van der Waals heterostructure constructions, opens up remarkable opportunities for a plethora of designer quantum heterostructures with previously inaccessible magnetoelectric and magneto-optical properties.

This special topic in APL Materials is devoted to research perspectives and reports on recent advances in material innovations on new 2D magnets, magneto-optical, magnetoelectric, and a variety of nanoscale characterizations of 2D magnetic systems, and theoretical prediction and understanding of novel 2D magnetic, spintronic, and magnonic properties, as well as exotic magnetism in relevant systems including twisted bilayer graphene, topological insulators, and Weyl semimetals. The addition of 2D magnets greatly expands the family of 2D materials, and the advanced spintronic devices they enable could reshape the landscape of nanoelectronics and nanospintronics in miniaturized form factors.