Researchers from the groups of Prof. Herre Van der Zant at TU Delft and Prof. Yara Galvão Gobato at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCAR) have teamed up to explore Van der Waals Heterostructures for Spintronics via a recent SPRINT grant. The goal of the collaboration was to combine the expertise of two labs: Van der Zant group’s on fabricating heterostructures involving two-dimensional magnetic materials and Galvão Gobato group’s on optical measurements on semiconductors.
The teams visited each other's countries to see the research facilities, meet researchers and discuss opportunities of complementary studies on the physical properties of 2D heterostructures. They also established the design of samples which were prepared in the Netherlands and Brazil, planned several optical experiments in Brazil, presented seminaries for researchers and students from Brazil and the Netherlands, discussed the preliminarily results and draft publications. They also discussed a possible long-term joint research project in van der Waals heterostructures based on 2D magnetic materials.
Various experiments were undertaken in Brazil and the Netherlands. As an example, the researchers measured the linearly and circularly polarized photoluminescence under magnetic fields up to 9 T oriented along the different crystallographic axis of CrSBr. The experimental results show that the valley and excitonic properties (intensity, energy position, and g-factors) of monolayer MoSe2 are strongly influenced by the magnetic order of the CrSBr substrate.