Science Advances 2018-04-01

Inducing ferromagnetism and Kondo effect in platinum by paramagnetic ionic gating

Lei Liang, Qihong Chen, Jianming Lu, Wytse Talsma, Juan Shan, Graeme R. Blake, Thomas T. M. Palstra, Jianting Ye

Index: 10.1126/sciadv.aar2030

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Abstract

Electrically controllable magnetism, which requires the field-effect manipulation of both charge and spin degrees of freedom, has attracted growing interest since the emergence of spintronics. We report the reversible electrical switching of ferromagnetic (FM) states in platinum (Pt) thin films by introducing paramagnetic ionic liquid (PIL) as the gating media. The paramagnetic ionic gating controls the movement of ions with magnetic moments, which induces itinerant ferromagnetism on the surface of Pt films, with large coercivity and perpendicular anisotropy mimicking the ideal two-dimensional Ising-type FM state. The electrical transport of the induced FM state shows Kondo effect at low temperature, suggesting spatially separated coexistence of Kondo scattering beneath the FM interface. The tunable FM state indicates that paramagnetic ionic gating could serve as a versatile method to induce rich transport phenomena combining field effect and magnetism at PIL-gated interfaces.