Microwave-synthesis of Two-Dimensional Metal Oxychloride Using Metal Chloride Precursor: Experimental and Thoretical Study

The existence of intrinsic ferromagnetism in Two-dimensional (2D) materials has invited numerous opportunities for applications in spintronics, memory devices, and data storage [1,2]. Among them, 2D van der Waals magnetic insulators at nanoscale level has received significant attention for their electronic, magneto-electronic and magneto-optical properties. Microwave synthesis is an extremely promising technique for the scalable synthesis of the 2D metal oxides and oxychlorides in a reproducible manner. Metal Chloride precursor CrCl₃.6H₂O was dispersed in a suitable solvent like dimethylformamide (DMF) or even direct microwave heating can immediately convert to the corresponding metal oxychloride 2D sheets of CrOCl due to the partial elimination of chlorine. Morphology and crystallographic structure are confirmed by the Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), High resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD). We use energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) to examine the atomic ratio for Cr, O and Cl of 1:1:1. The experimental results have been complementd with density functional theory calculations to explore the spin-specific electronic, magnetic and transport properties of the system under different stimuli [3]. The material is found to be semiconducting and offering rapid enhancement of the critical temperature in the presence of strain [4]. This ferromagnetic semiconducting phase of CrOCl can have great significance in designing 2D spintronic devices and sensors.

Ref:

1. Kar, S., A. K. Nair, and S. J. Ray. "Supreme enhancement of ferromagnetism in a spontaneous-symmetry-broken 2D nanomagnet." Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics 54, no. 10 (2020): 105001.

2. Nair, A. K., and S. J. Ray. "Electronic phase-crossover and room temperature ferromagnetism in a two-dimensional (2D) spin lattice." RSC advances 11, no. 2 (2021): 946-952.

3. Rani, Shivani, A. K. Nair, M. Venkata Kamalakar, and Soumya Jyoti Ray. "Spin-selective response tunability in two-dimensional nanomagnet." Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter 32, no. 41 (2020): 415301.

4. Nair, A. K., Shivani Rani, M. Venkata Kamalakar, and Soumya Jyoti Ray. "Bi-stimuli assisted engineering and control of magnetic phase in monolayer CrOCl." Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 22, no. 22 (2020): 12806-12813.