Issue 6, 2017

Near-room-temperature Chern insulator and Dirac spin-gapless semiconductor: nickel chloride monolayer

Abstract

A great obstacle for practical applications of the quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) effect is the lack of suitable QAH materials (Chern insulators) with a large non-trivial band gap, room-temperature magnetic order and high carrier mobility. Based on first-principles calculations it is shown here that a nickel chloride (NiCl3) monolayer has all these characteristics. Thus, the NiCl3 monolayer represents a new class of Dirac materials with Dirac spin-gapless semiconducting properties and high-temperature ferromagnetism (∼400 K). Taking into account the spin–orbit coupling, the NiCl3 monolayer becomes an intrinsic Chern insulator with a large non-trivial band gap of ∼24 meV, corresponding to an operating temperature as high as ∼280 K at which the quantum anomalous Hall effect could be observed. The calculated large non-trivial gap, high Curie temperature and single-spin Dirac states reported herein for the NiCl3 monolayer led us to propose that this material gives a great promise for potential realization of a near-room temperature QAH effect and potential applications in spintronics. Last but not least the calculated Fermi velocities of Dirac fermions of about 4 × 105 m s−1 indicate very high mobility in NiCl3 monolayers.

Graphical abstract: Near-room-temperature Chern insulator and Dirac spin-gapless semiconductor: nickel chloride monolayer

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
31 Oct 2016
Accepted
07 Jan 2017
First published
09 Jan 2017
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Nanoscale, 2017,9, 2246-2252

Near-room-temperature Chern insulator and Dirac spin-gapless semiconductor: nickel chloride monolayer

J. He, X. Li, P. Lyu and P. Nachtigall, Nanoscale, 2017, 9, 2246 DOI: 10.1039/C6NR08522A

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