Protonic gate tuned magnetic properties in van der Waals materials and heterostructures

Protonic gating is a newly developed innovative technique with the potential to open up pathways for new electronic, spintronic and valleytronic devices. Compared with gating techniques based on dielectric layers, ionic gating can provide several orders of magnitude larger charge tunability. Ionic gating is often implemented using a Li+ liquid electrolyte but this has three significant shortcomings; first, the liquid electrolyte can corrode the sample; second, the size of the Li+ ion limits the penetration depth and hence renders the method suitable only to ultra-thin samples; third, the liquid state is inconvenient for many experiments and applications and cannot be used at room temperature. Our protonic gating technique is based on a solid protonic electrolyte and eliminates these three shortcomings. In this report, I will present the recent experimental results of electron transport in 2D magnetic materials and heterostructures under protonic gate voltages.