DOI: 10.21468/scipostphyscore.9.4.070 ISSN: 2666-9366

Room-temperature multiferroic semiconductor with electrically switchable valley polarization in Zn-/Cd-intercalated $\mathrm{CrSe_2}$

Jiatian Guo, Hongkuan Yuan, Hong Chen

Purely electrical switching of ferromagnetism-induced valley polarization in two dimensional (2D) ferrovalley materials provides a promising avenue for low-power information processing. Herein, Zn- and Cd-intercalated CrSe

_{2} 2
(denoted XCrSe
_{2} 2
, X = Zn, Cd) are predicted by first-principles calculations to be room-temperature ferrovalley semiconductors, in which valley polarization can be switched by reversing the ferroelectric (FE) polarization. The intercalated atoms break inversion symmetry and generate in-plane and out-of-plane FE polarizations with low switching barriers and polar distortions stable above room temperature in AIMD simulations. The superexchange of
t_{2g} t 2 g
and
e_g e g
of Cr atoms dominates the ferromagnetic (FM) coupling with Curie temperature near 350 K and out-of-plane easy axis. The ferromagnetism together with spin-orbit coupling lifts the K/K
' ′
valley degeneracy and produces spin-polarized valley splitting. Crucially, FE reversal strongly modifies the electronic structure and valley-resolved states, enabling electrical control of the valley splitting, and ferroelectrically switchable anomalous valley Hall effect in a single material platform. Our results establish monolayer XCrSe
_2 2
as a rare 2D multiferroic semiconductor combining robust FE and FM orders with nonvolatile electrical control of valley degrees of freedom.

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