Thickness-dependent magneto-optical effects in hole-doped GaS and GaSe multilayers: A first-principles study

Fei Li, Xiaodong Zhou, Wanxiang Feng*, Botao Fu, Yugui Yao

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

20 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Recently, two-dimensional (2D) GaS and GaSe nanosheets were successfully fabricated and the measured electronic, mechanical, and optoelectronic properties are excellent. Here, using the first-principles density functional theory, we investigate the magnetic, optical, and magneto-optical (MO) Kerr and Faraday effects in hole-doped GaS and GaSe multilayers. GaS and GaSe monolayers (MLs) manifest ferromagnetic ground states by introducing even a small amount of hole doping, whereas the magnetism in GaS and GaSe multilayers are significantly different under hole doping. Our results show that ferromagnetic states can be easily established in GaS bilayers and trilayers under proper hole doping, however, most of GaSe multilayers are more favorable to nonmagnetic states. The magnetic moments in GaS multilayers are weakened remarkably with the increasing of thin film thickness and are negligible more than three MLs. This leads to the thickness dependence of MO Kerr and Faraday effects. Furthermore, the MO effects strongly depend on the doping concentration and therefore are electrically controllable by adjusting the number of holes via gate voltage. The substrate effects on the MO properties are also discussed. Combining the unique MO and other interesting physical properties make GaS and GaSe a superior 2D material platform for semiconductor MO and spintronic nanodevices.

Original languageEnglish
Article number043048
JournalNew Journal of Physics
Volume20
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2018

Keywords

  • GaS
  • GaSe
  • first-principles calculation
  • magneto-optical Faraday effect
  • magneto-optical Kerr effect
  • multilayer

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