Tilted Magnetic Structure and Enhanced Magnetic Anisotropy of Bilayer CrSBr Induced by Exchange Bias Effect

The exchange bias (EB) effect is widely used for stabilizing reference magnetic layers in traditional spintronic devices, yet the EB strength strongly depends on the interfacial quality. Van der Waals antiferromagnets provide an ideal physical platform to study the interfacial magnetic properties for device design in the 2D limit. Herein, we construct CrSBr/Fe3GeTe2 heterostructures and investigate the interfacial coupling via first-principles calculations. The results reveal that robust EB coupling in the heterostructure breaks the intrinsic in-plane magnetic limitation of CrSBr, inducing a stable tilted magnetic structure with magnetic moments tilting toward the out-of-plane direction. Such EB-driven magnetic reconstruction dramatically boosts the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy energy to ~6.5 meV/Cr and increases the AFM-FM energy difference to 1.97 meV/f.u. from 0.32 meV/f.u., achieving simultaneous enhancement of magnetic anisotropy and thermodynamic stability. The transport simulations of the CrSBr/Fe3GeTe2-based magnetic tunnel junction demonstrate that ~65% TMR can be achieved with the use of such an EB-pinned reference layer. This work clarifies the EB modulation mechanism in 2D CrSBr/Fe3GeTe2 heterostructures and provides a reliable theoretical basis for the design of high-performance CrSBr-based reference layers in spintronic devices.