Observation of ferrimagnetic ordering in chemically synthesized 2D Cr2S3 nanosheets

It is established that 2D magnetic materials are the ideal platform for building up modern-day electronic and spintronic devices. The popular ways to achieve 2D magnetic materials are mechanical exfoliation and chemical vapor deposition. However, the direct chemical synthesis route of such magnetic 2D materials on a large scale is relatively unexplored. This article reports an easy and cost-effective facile chemical synthesis with a proper capping agent and magnetic study of free-standing 2D Cr2S3 nanosheets and Cr2S3 nanoparticles within the temperature range of 2-300 K under the magnetic field of up to 5 T. Although few magnetic results on 2D Cr2S3 are available in the literature, there is enough scope to work for an in-depth understanding of the magnetic aspects of this 2D material. Here, ferrimagnetic ordering with a sufficiently high coercivity of up to 0.139 T at 2 K along with a tendency to the saturation in magnetization down to a certain temperature limit is observed. Contrary to the strong antiferromagnetic coupling with a Neel temperature, as observed by previous researchers, is also observed for this chemically synthesized 2D Cr2S3 nanosheets. A transition temperature of 117 K is observed for the Cr2S3 nanosheets, whereas for Cr2S3 nanoparticles, a transition temperature of 101.7 K is observed with negligible coercivity. This facile synthesis technique may be applied to achieve other non-van der Waals type 2D magnetic materials. These kinds of non-van der Waals type 2D magnets will be useful to modern-day spintronic devices.