Consequences of Magneto-Electrical Coupling in Multiferroic VSe₂/Sc₂CO₂ Heterostructures

Two-dimensional van der Waals heterostructures are potential game changers both in understanding the fundamental physics and in the realization of various devices that exploit magnetism on the nanoscale. Multiferroic heterostructures comprising a two-dimensional ferroelectric and a two-dimensional ferromagnet are ideal candidates for the electrical control of properties of the ferromagnets, which can lead to nonvolatile memory devices, for example. Relatively new but immensely promising two-dimensional materials, MXene and transition metal dichalcogenides, can be effectively combined to achieve the goal, as both have flexibilities in their structures and compositions that are tunable. In this work, using density functional theory, we have investigated the magneto-electric coupling-driven transitions in the electronic ground states of VSe2/Sc2CO2 bilayer and trilayer heterostructures. Our results demonstrate that the change in the ferroelectric polarization in the MXene layer leads to changes in the spin-polarized band structures of the magnetic component VSe2 enabling a semiconductor to half-metal transition in these heterostructures. We propose several applications of this magneto-electric coupling in these multiferroic heterostructures that can lead to the efficient operation of field effect transistors and achieve nonvolatility in memory devices at the nanoscale.