Electric field-tunable ferromagnetism in a van der Waals semiconductor up to room temperature
Ferromagnetic semiconductors, coupling charge transport and magnetism via electrical means, show great promise for spin-based logic devices. Despite decades of efforts to achieve such co-functionality, maintaining ferromagnetic order at room temperature remains elusive. Here, we address this long-standing challenge by implanting dilute Co atoms into few-layer black phosphorus through atomically-thin boron nitride diffusion barrier. Our Co-doped black phosphorus-based devices exhibit ferromagnetism up to room temperature while preserving its high mobility (~ 1000 cm 2 V - 1 s - 1 ) and semiconducting characteristics. By incorporating ferromagnetic Co-doped black phosphorus into magnetic tunnel junction devices, we demonstrate a large tunnelling magnetoresistance that extends up to room temperature. This study presents a new approach to engineering ferromagnetic ordering in otherwise nonmagnetic materials, thereby expanding the repertoire and applications of magnetic semiconductors envisioned thus far.
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Fu, D., Liu, J., Hou, F., Chang, X., Qu, T., Félisaz, J., Krishnaswamy, G. K., Grebenchuk, S., Jie, Y., Watanabe, K., TANIGUCHI, T., Pereira, V. M., Novoselov, K. S., Koperski, M., Yakovlev, N. L., Soumyanarayanan, A., Ahmet, A., Yazyev, O. V., Lin, J., et al. (2025). Electric field-tunable ferromagnetism in a van der Waals semiconductor up to room temperature. Nature Communications, 16(1), Article 10197. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-59961-2
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