High Curie temperature and strain-induced spin reorientation transition in two dimensional CrPbTe3

We investigated the strain-induced magnetic properties of two-dimensional CrPbTe₃ (CPT) monolayer belonged to the members of Cr based two-dimensional family. We explored the possibility of fabrication of 2D layer through the mechanical stability, dynamical stability, formation energy, cohesive energy, and thermal stability calculations. We found ferromagnetic ground state and the pristine CrPbTe₃ monolayer had an indirect band gap of 0.25 eV with an in-plane magnetic anisotropy of -1.37 meV/cell. The Curie temperature was 110 K and this is much larger than that of CrI₃, CrSiTe₃, and CrGeTe₃. Under the 4 % tensile strain, the band gap was increased to 0.45 eV and also the Curie temperature was enhanced to 150 K. We found strain-induced semiconductor-metal transition under the compressive strain and also the spin reorientation transition from in-plane to perpendicular magnetic anisotropy at 4 % compressive strain and the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy energy was almost three times larger than that of the CrGeTe₃ layer. Our finding may suggest that the CrPbTe₃ system can be utilized for spintronics and straintronic applications.