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Results for “interlayer coupling”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

Enhancement of van der Waals Interlayer Coupling through Polar Janus MoSSe

Interlayer coupling plays essential roles in the quantum transport, polaritonic, and electrochemical properties of stacked van der Waals (vdW) materials. In this work, we report the unconventional interlayer coupling in vdW heterostructures (HSs) by utilizing an emerging 2D material, Janus transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). In contrast to conventional TMDs, monolayer Janus TMDs have two different chalcogen layers sandwiching the transition metal and thus exhibit broken mirror symmetry and an intrinsic vertical dipole moment. Such a broken symmetry is found to strongly enhance the vdW interlayer coupling by as much as 13.2% when forming MoSSe/MoS 2 HS as compared to the pristine MoS 2 counterparts. Our noncontact ultralow-frequency Raman probe, linear chain model, and density functional theory calculations confirm the enhancement and reveal the origins as charge redistribution in Janus MoSSe and reduced interlayer distance. Furthermore, our results uncover the potential of tuning interlayer coupling strength through Janus heterostacking.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2017

Voltage-controlled interlayer coupling in perpendicularly magnetized magnetic tunnel junctions

Magnetic interlayer coupling is one of the central phenomena in spintronics. It has been predicted that the sign of interlayer coupling can be manipulated by electric fields, instead of electric currents, thereby offering a promising low energy magnetization switching mechanism. Here we present the experimental demonstration of voltage-controlled interlayer coupling in a new perpendicular magnetic tunnel junction system with a GdO x tunnel barrier, where a large perpendicular magnetic anisotropy and a sizable tunnelling magnetoresistance have been achieved at room temperature. Owing to the interfacial nature of the magnetism, the ability to move oxygen vacancies within the barrier, and a large proximity-induced magnetization of GdO x , both the magnitude and the sign of the interlayer coupling in these junctions can be directly controlled by voltage. Lastly, these results pave a new path towards achieving energy-efficient magnetization switching by controlling interlayer coupling.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2019

Oxygen-Induced In Situ Manipulation of the Interlayer Coupling and Exciton Recombination in Bi 2 Se 3 /MoS 2 2D Heterostructures

Two-dimensional (2D) heterostructures are more than a sum of the parent 2D materials, but are also a product of the interlayer coupling, which can induce new properties. In this paper, we present a method to tune the interlayer coupling in Bi 2 Se 3 /MoS 2 2D heterostructures by regulating the oxygen presence in the atmosphere, while applying laser or thermal energy. Our data suggest that the interlayer coupling is tuned through the diffusive intercalation and deintercalation of oxygen molecules. When one layer of Bi 2 Se 3 is grown on monolayer MoS 2 , an influential interlayer coupling is formed, which quenches the signature photoluminescence (PL) peaks. However, thermally treating in the presence of oxygen disrupts the interlayer coupling, facilitating the emergence of the MoS 2 PL peak. Our density functional theory calculations predict that intercalated oxygen increases the interlayer separation ∼17%, disrupting the interlayer coupling and inducing the layers to behave more electronically independent. The interlayer coupling can then be restored by thermally treating in N 2 or Ar, where the peaks will requench. Hence, this is an interesting oxygen-induced switching between “non-radiative” and “radiative” exciton recombination. This switching can also be accomplished locally, controllably, and reversibly using a low-power focused laser, while changing the environment from pure N 2 to air. This allows for the interlayer coupling to be precisely manipulated with submicron spatial resolution, facilitating site-programmable 2D light-emitting pixels whose emission intensity could be precisely varied by a factor exceeding 200×. Our results show that these atomically thin 2D heterostructures may be excellent candidates for oxygen sensing.

2D materials↗
DOE OSTI2015

Temperature-induced sign change of the magnetic interlayer coupling in Ni/Ni{sub 25}Mn{sub 75}/Ni trilayers on Cu{sub 3}Au(001)

We investigated the magnetic interlayer coupling between two ferromagnetic (FM) Ni layers through an antiferromagnetic (AFM) Ni{sub 25}Mn{sub 75} layer and the influence of this coupling on the exchange bias phenomenon. The interlayer coupling energy of an epitaxial trilayer of 14 atomic monolayers (ML) Ni/45 ML Ni{sub 25}Mn{sub 75}/16 ML Ni on Cu{sub 3}Au(001) was extracted from minor-loop magnetization measurements using in-situ magneto-optical Kerr effect. The interlayer coupling changes from ferromagnetic to antiferromagnetic when the temperature is increased above 300 K. This sign change is interpreted as the result of the competition between an antiparallel Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY)-type interlayer coupling, which dominates at high temperature, and a stronger direct exchange coupling across the AFM layer, which is present only below the Néel temperature of the AFM layer.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2020

Interlayer coupling induced quasiparticles

In this work, we present an exact treatment of layered many-body electronic systems in the presence of interlayer coupling within the Schwinger functional derivative approach on the Keldysh contour. Our transparent approach allows us to clarify the definition of interlayer coupling by showing the independent roles hybridization and interactions play in generating new electronic and magnetic excitations. We find interlayer coupling to induce a variety of plasmons, magnons, and excitons, residing within a layer, traversing between layers, or propagating along the interface. Moreover, we predict interfacial excitations, including an electron-hole pairing pathway, facilitated by previously ignored layer nonconserving interactions. Finally, we briefly explore the consequence of interlayer coupling on a bilayer square lattice system.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Tailoring Interlayer Coupling in Few-Layer MoS 2 with Stacking Configuration

Here we manipulated the stacking configuration of a few-layer MoS 2 to investigate the impact of interlayer coupling on electrical band engineering. By simultaneously synthesizing two distinct stacking types of MoS2 islands, wedding cake (W) and spiral (S), on the same substrate, we explored layer-dependent electrical properties under identical experimental conditions. We used multiple scanning probe microscopy techniques to map local electronic properties with respect to the number of layers, stacking configurations, and local heterogeneities. First-principles calculations verified the role of distinct interlayer coupling in terms of the interlayer distance. Our findings highlight the critical role of interlayer coupling in applications of transition metal dichalcogenides.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Exploring interlayer coupling in the twisted bilayer PtTe 2

We have investigated interlayer interactions in the bilayer PtTe 2 system, which influence the electronic energy bands near the Fermi level. Our diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) calculations for the high-symmetry bilayer stackings (AA, AB, AC) manifest distinct interlayer binding characteristics among the stacking modes by revealing significantly different interlayer separations depending on the stacking, which is critical to understanding the interlayer coupling of the twisted bilayers consisting of various local stacking arrangements. Furthermore, a comparison between the interlayer separations obtained from DMC and density functional theory (DFT) shows that meta-generalized gradient approximation (GGA)-based van der Waals–DFT results agree with DMC for different layer stackings, including twisted bilayers, but only the ground-state AA stacking matches well with GGA-based DFT predictions. This underscores the importance of accurate exchange-correlation potentials even for capturing the stacking-dependent interlayer binding properties. We further show that the variability in DFT-predicted interlayer separations is responsible for the large discrepancy of band structures in the 21 . 79 ∘ twisted bilayer PtTe 2 , affecting its classification as metallic or insulating. These results demonstrate the importance of obtaining a correct description of stacking-dependent interlayer coupling in modeling delicate bilayer systems at finite twists. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Strong interlayer coupling and long-lived interlayer excitons in two-dimensional perovskite derivatives and transition metal dichalcogenides van der Waals heterostructures

Two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures offer new platforms for exploring novel physics and diverse applications ranging from electronics and photonics to optoelectronics at the nanoscale. The studies to date have largely focused on transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) based samples prepared by mechanical exfoliation method, therefore it is of signi ficant interests to study high-quality vdW heterostructures using novel materials prepared by a versatile method. Here, we report a two-step vapor phase growth process for the creation of high-quality vdW heterostructures based on perovskites and TMDCs, such as 2D Cs 3 Bi 2 I 9 /MoSe 2 , with a large lattice mismatch. Supported by experimental and theoretical investigations, we discover that the Cs 3 Bi 2 I 9 /MoSe 2 vdW heterostructure possesses hybrid band alignments consisting of type -I and type-II heterojunctions because of the existence of defect energy levels in Cs 3 Bi 2 I 9 . More importantly, we demonstrate that the type-II heterojunction in the Cs 3 Bi 2 I 9 /MoSe 2 vdW heterostructure not only shows a higher interlayer exciton density, but also exhibits a longer interlayer exciton lifetime than traditional 2D TMDCs based type-II heterostructures. We attribute this phenomenon to the reduced overlap of electron and hole wavefunctions caused by the large lattice mismatch. Finally, our work demonstrates that it is possible to directly grow high-quality vdW heterostructures based on entirely different materials which provide promising platforms for exploring novel physics and cutting-edge applications, such as optoelectronics, valleytronics, and high-temperature super fluidity.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Tuning the interlayer coupling in La 0.7 Sr 0.3 Mn 0.95 Ru 0.05 O 3 / LaNiO 3 multilayers with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy

In ferromagnetic oxide epitaxial multilayers, magnetic properties and interlayer coupling are determined by a variety of factors. Beyond the contribution of interlayer exchange coupling, strain and interfacial effects, such as structural reconstructions or charge transfer, play significant roles, resulting in complex magnetic behavior. In this study, the interlayer coupling of ferromagnetic La 0.7 ⁢Sr 0.3⁢ Mn 0.95 ⁢Ru 0.05 ⁢O 3 (LSMRO) layers (8 nm thick) was investigated, when separated by epitaxial spacers of paramagnetic metallic LaNiO 3 (LNO), in stacks exhibiting perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. By varying the thickness of the spacer, it was found that the coupling between two LSMRO layers changes from antiferromagnetic (with a 4-unit-cell-thick LNO spacer) to ferromagnetic (with a 6-unit-cell-thick LNO spacer). For multilayers comprising five LSMRO layers and a 4-unit-cell-thick LNO spacer, the antiferromagnetic coupling was preserved. However, the effective magnetic anisotropy changed, causing the magnetization to cant more towards the in-plane direction. Further, this behavior was corroborated by X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) investigations at the Mn and Ni L 3 edges. The XMCD results indicated that the 4-unit-cell-thick LNO spacer in the multilayer become magnetically ordered, closely following the magnetization of adjacent LSMRO layers.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2016

Twisted MoSe 2 bilayers with variable local stacking and interlayer coupling revealed by low-frequency Raman spectroscopy

Unique twisted bilayers of MoSe 2 with multiple stacking orientations and interlayer couplings in the narrow range of twist angles, 60 ± 3°, are revealed by low-frequency Raman spectroscopy and theoretical analysis. The slight deviation from 60 allows the concomitant presence of patches featuring all three high-symmetry stacking configurations (2H or AA', AB', A'B) in one unique bilayer system. In this case, the periodic arrangement of the patches and their size strongly depend on the twist angle. Ab initio modeling predicts significant changes in frequencies and intensities of low-frequency modes versus stacking and twist angle. Experimentally, the variable stacking and coupling across the interface is revealed by the appearance of two breathing modes corresponding to the mixture of the high-symmetry stacking configurations and unaligned regions of monolayers. Only one breathing mode is observed outside the narrow range of twist angles. This indicates a stacking transition to unaligned monolayers with mismatched atom registry without the in-plane restoring force required to generate a shear mode. As a result, the variable interlayer coupling and spacing in transition metal dichalcogenide bilayers revealed in this study may provide a new platform for optoelectronic applications of these materials.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2018

Oscillatory interlayer coupling in spin Hall systems

Many spintronics applications consist of ultrathin magnetic and nonmagnetic multilayers and require an in-depth understanding of interfacial magnetism and spin transport. Here, we study permalloy/copper/platinum multilayer systems. We find that magnetic damping, perpendicular anisotropy, and proximity magnetization exhibit correlated oscillations as a function of the copper thickness. We ascribe these observations to an oscillatory interlayer coupling between permalloy and platinum. Such interlayer coupling may have a significant impact on the performance of spintronics applications.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2014

Evolution of interlayer coupling in twisted molybdenum disulfide bilayers

Van der Waals (vdW) coupling is emerging as a powerful method to engineer and tailor physical properties of atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) materials. In graphene/graphene and graphene/boron-nitride structures it leads to interesting physical phenomena ranging from new van Hove singularities and Fermi velocity renormalization to unconventional quantum Hall effects and Hofstadter's butterfly pattern. 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), another system of predominantly vdW-coupled atomically thin layers can also exhibit interesting but different coupling phenomena because TMDCs can be direct or indirect bandgap semiconductors. Here, we present the first study on the evolution of interlayer coupling with twist angles in as-grown MoS 2 bilayers. We find that an indirect bandgap emerges in bilayers with any stacking configuration, but the bandgap size varies appreciably with the twist angle: it shows the largest redshift for AA- and AB-stacked bilayers, and a significantly smaller but constant redshift for all other twist angles. The vibration frequency of the out-of-plane phonon in MoS 2 shows similar twist angle dependence. Furthermore, our observations, together with ab initio calculations, reveal that this evolution of interlayer coupling originates from the repulsive steric effects, which leads to different interlayer separations between the two MoS 2 layers in different stacking configurations.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2018

Temperature dependence of interlayer coupling in perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions with GdOx barriers

Perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions with GdO X tunneling barriers have shown a unique voltage controllable interlayer magnetic coupling effect. Here we investigate the quality of the GdO X barrier and the coupling mechanism in these junctions by examining the temperature dependence of the tunneling magnetoresistance and the interlayer coupling from room temperature down to 11 K. The barrier is shown to be of good quality with the spin independent conductance only contributing a small portion, 14%, to the total room temperature conductance, similar to AlO X and MgO barriers. The interlayer coupling, however, shows an anomalously strong temperature dependence including sign changes below 80 K. This non-trivial temperature dependence is not described by previous models of interlayer coupling and may be due to the large induced magnetic moment of the Gd ions in the barrier.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2023

Optical reflectance imaging reveals interlayer coupling in mechanically stacked MoS 2 and WS 2 bilayers

Optical reflectance imaging is a popular technique for characterizing 2D materials, thanks to its simplicity and speed of data acquisition. The use of this method for studying interlayer phenomena in stacked 2D layers has, however, remained limited. Here we demonstrate that optical imaging can reveal the nature of interlayer coupling in stacked MoS 2 and WS 2 bilayers through their observed reflectance contrast versus the substrate. Successful determination of interlayer coupling requires co-optimization of the illumination wavelength and the thickness of an underlying SiO 2 film. Our observations are supported by multilayer optical calculations together with an analysis of the effect of any interlayer gap. This approach promises quick characterization of constructed 2D material systems.

Nguyen, Vu↗
DOE OSTI2017

Interlayer Coupling and Gate-Tunable Excitons in Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Heterostructures

Bilayer van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures such as MoS 2 /WS 2 and MoSe 2 /WSe 2 have attracted much attention recently, particularly because of their type II band alignments and the formation of interlayer exciton as the lowest-energy excitonic state. In this work, we calculate the electronic and optical properties of such heterostructures with the first-principles GW+Bethe–Salpeter Equation (BSE) method and reveal the important role of interlayer coupling in deciding the excited-state properties, including the band alignment and excitonic properties. Our calculation shows that due to the interlayer coupling, the low energy excitons can be widely tuned by a vertical gate field. In particular, the dipole oscillator strength and radiative lifetime of the lowest energy exciton in these bilayer heterostructures is varied by over an order of magnitude within a practical external gate field. We also build a simple model that captures the essential physics behind this tunability and allows the extension of the ab initio results to a large range of electric fields. In conclusion, our work clarifies the physical picture of interlayer excitons in bilayer vdW heterostructures and predicts a wide range of gate-tunable excited-state properties of 2D optoelectronic devices.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2020

Spin orbit torque switching of synthetic Co/Ir/Co trilayers with perpendicular anisotropy and tunable interlayer coupling

Spin orbit torque (SOT) has attracted much attention as an energy efficient electrical method to switch the magnetization in single magnetic layer with both in-plane and perpendicular anisotropy. Here, we report SOT switching of synthetic antiferromagnetic and ferrimagnetic Co/Ir/Co trilayers, where the net magnetization and the interlayer coupling strength are highly controllable. Here, a weak external field dependence of the SOT switching was observed due to the robust domain wall structure in the trilayer. The switching current density was observed to scale inversely with the net magnetization. For trilayers with the same net magnetization, switching current is independent of the layer order because switching in the thicker Co layer dominates. In both ferromagnetic and antiferromagetic regimes, the switching current reflects the interlayer coupling strength.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

Nonlinear Nano‐Imaging of Interlayer Coupling in 2D Graphene‐Semiconductor Heterostructures

The emergent electronic, spin, and other quantum properties of 2D heterostructures of graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides are controlled by the underlying interlayer coupling and associated charge and energy transfer dynamics. However, these processes are sensitive to interlayer distance and crystallographic orientation, which are in turn affected by defects, grain boundaries, or other nanoscale heterogeneities. This obfuscates the distinction between interlayer charge and energy transfer. Here, nanoscale imaging in coherent four‐wave mixing (FWM) and incoherent two‐photon photoluminescence (2PPL) is combined with a tip distance‐dependent coupled rate equation model to resolve the underlying intra‐ and inter‐layer dynamics while avoiding the influence of structural heterogeneities in mono‐ to multi‐layer graphene/WSe 2 heterostructures. With selective insertion of hBN spacer layers, it is shown that energy, as opposed to charge transfer, dominates the interlayer‐coupled optical response. From the distinct nano‐FWM and ‐2PPL tip‐sample distance‐dependent modification of interlayer and intralayer relaxation by tip‐induced enhancement and quenching, an interlayer energy transfer time of τ ET ≈ ( 0 . 35 − 0.15 + 0.65 ) $\tau _{\rm ET} \approx (0.35^{+0.65}_{-0.15})$ ps consistent with recent reports is derived. As a local probe technique, this approach highlights the ability to determine intrinsic sample properties even in the presence of large sample heterogeneity.

77 NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2015

Interlayer coupling in Fe/Cr/Gd multilayer structures

The effect of the chromium layer thickness on the magnetic state of an [Fe/Cr/Gd/Cr]{sub n} multilayer structure is studied. A series of Fe/Cr/Gd structures with Cr spacer thicknesses of 4–30 Å is studied by SQUID magnetometry and ferromagnetic resonance in the temperature range 4.2–300 K. The obtained experimental results are described in terms of an effective field model, which takes into account a biquadratic contribution to the interlayer coupling energy and a nonuniform magnetization distribution inside the gadolinium layer (which was detected earlier). Depending on the magnetic field and temperature, the following types of magnetic ordering are identified at various chromium layer thicknesses: ferromagnetic, antiferromagnetic, and canted ordering. A comparison of the experimental and calculated curves allowed us to determine the dependence of the bilinear (J{sub 1}) and biquadratic (J{sub 2}) exchange constants on chromium layer thickness t{sub Cr}. Weak oscillations at a period of about 18 Å are detected in the J{sub 1}(t{sub Cr}) dependence in the range 8–30 Å. The interlayer coupling oscillations in the system under study are assumed to be related to the RKKY exchange interaction mechanism via the conduction electrons of Cr.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗