Physicists have finally created a 2D magnet

Just one atom thick, the magnet will allow researchers to perform previously impossible experiments.

Katherine Bourzac | Nature
June 7, 2017

The number of 2D materials has exploded since the discovery of graphene in 2004. However, this menagerie of single-atom-thick semiconductors, insulators and superconductors has been missing a member — magnets. In fact, physicists weren’t even sure that 2D magnets were possible, until now.

Researchers report the first truly 2D magnet, made of a compound called chromium triiodide, in a paper published on 7 June in Nature. The discovery could eventually lead to new data-storage devices and designs for quantum computers. For now, the 2D magnets will enable physicists to perform previously impossible experiments and test fundamental theories of magnetism.

Pablo Jarillo-Herrero, a condensed-matter physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and Xiaodong Xu, an optoelectronics researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle, were searching for a 2D magnet separately before meeting in 2016. They decided to combine forces to investigate. “It’s a matter of principle — there is a big thing missing,” says Jarillo-Herrero.
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