Magnetic Heterostructures of Transition Metal Dichalcogenides: Antiparallel Magnetic Moments and Half-Metallic State

Abstract

Various forms of periodic, lateral, and vertical heterostructures constructed from magnetic transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers, FeTe2 and NiTe2, have been investigated by using hybrid density functional calculations. The lateral heterostructures formed from the stripes of these constituents joined along their armchair edges are found to be half-metallic within both constituent stripes with integer number of total magnetic moment per cell; they are semiconductor for spin-down electrons but metallic for spin-up ones. Additionally, the indirect band gap of these halfmetallic structures in the energy range of visible light as well as their normal band lineup exhibit features that can be tunable with the width of stripes. Normal band lineup can lead to the confinement of excess spin-down electrons and eventually to the change of dimensionality from two to one. Strong variations of the band gap can be attained by ddoping. Half-metallicity spreads from the FeTe2 side of the junction to the adjacent NiTe2 side, which is metallic when stand-alone, through strong Fe-Te-Ni bonds at the boundary. In contrast, in the thin, vertical heterostructures, where the interlayer coupling is rather weak, the half-metallic character is retained only in the FeTe2 side; the NiTe2 side remains a spin-polarized metal. Hence, these vertical heterostructures form a semiconductor/metal junction with a Schottky barrier for one spin direction to function as a diode but a metal/metal junction for the opposite spin direction to function as a conductor. These lateral and vertical heterostructures have inhomogeneous magnetic moment configurations due to p-d hybridization; in both sides of the junction, chalcogen atoms have magnetic moments antiparallel to those at transition metal atoms. Functionalities revealed here are rare and can lead to crucial applications.