Proximity-Induced Interfacial Room-Temperature Ferromagnetism in Semiconducting Fe₃GeTe₂

Abstract

The discoveries of two-dimensional ferromagnetism and magnetic semiconductors highly enrich the magnetic material family for constructing spin-based electronic devices, but with an acknowledged challenge that the Curie temperature (T_c) is usually far below room temperature. Many efforts such as voltage control and magnetic ion doping are currently underway to enhance the functional temperature, in which the involvement of additional electrodes or extra magnetic ions limits their application in practical devices. Here we demonstrate that the magnetic proximity, a robust effect but with elusive mechanisms, can induce room-temperature ferromagnetism at the interface between sputtered Pt and semiconducting Fe₃GeTe₂, both of which do not show ferromagnetism at 300 K. The independent electrical and magnetization measurements, structure analysis, and control samples with Ta highlighting the role of Pt confirm that the ferromagnetism with the T_c of above 400 K arises from the Fe₃GeTe₂/Pt interfaces, rather than Fe aggregation or other artificial effects. Moreover, contrary to conventional ferromagnet/Pt structures, the spin current generated by the Pt layer is enhanced more than two times at the Fe₃GeTe₂/Pt interfaces, indicating the potential applications of the unique proximity effect in building highly efficient spintronic devices. These results may pave a new avenue to create room-temperature functional spin devices based on low-T_c materials and provide clear evidence of magnetic proximity effects by using nonferromagnetic materials.