Physical properties of the van der Waals material Fe₅GeTe₂

van der Waals bonded materials that possess magnetic order at high temperatures are of great interest for integrating magnetic effects into engineered heterostructures. Of the cleavable materials studied so far, Fe_5-xGeTe₂ possesses the highest reported Curie temperature T_C in the bulk and maintains a high T_C in exfoliated flakes. This presentation will discuss the physical properties of Fe_5-xGeTe₂ single crystals, with an emphasis on the metastable nature of the compound and how magnetism on one Fe sublattice dominates the transport properties. The ability to tune the magnetism through cobalt doping will also be briefly discussed.