Two-dimensional GdI2/GeC van der Waals heterostructure: Bipolar magnetic semiconductor, high critical temperature and large magnetic anisotropy

The band alignment, intrinsic ferromagnetism, Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, magnetic anisotropy and critical temperature (TC) of a GdI2/GeC van der Waals (vdW) heterostructure were systematically in-vestigated by first-principles calculations and Monte Carlo simulations. The proposed GdI2/GeC vdW het-erostructure is a bipolar magnetic semiconductor with Type-I band alignment, large in-plane magnetic anisotropy energy (MAE) of - 0.912 mJ/m2 and high critical temperature of 466 K. In addition, under biaxial strains, the heterostructure transformed from semiconductor into metal, while the easy magnetization axis maintained in-plane and TC increased. The results indicated that the GdI2/GeC vdW heterostructure pre-sented large MAE and high TC, having potential applications in spintronic devices. & COPY; 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.