Strain-Mediated Lattice Reconstruction Enhances Ferromagnetism in Cr2Ge2Te6/WTe2 van der Waals Heterobilayers

Strain-Mediated Lattice Reconstruction Enhances Ferromagnetism in Cr2Ge2Te6/WTe2 van der Waals Heterobilayers

Nano Letters

10.1021/acs.nanolett.6c00201

https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.6c00201

Franz Herling, Mireia Torres-Sala, Dorye. L. Esteras, Charlotte Evason, Motomi Aoki, Marcos Rosado, Kapil Gupta, Bernat Mundet, Kai Xu, J. Sebastián Reparaz, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Dimitre Dimitrov, Vera Marinova, Ivan A. Verzhbitskiy, Goki Eda, José H. Garcia, Stephan Roche, Juan. F. Sierra, Sergio O. Valenzuela

15 April 2026

Herling, F., Torres-Sala, M., Esteras, Dorye. L., Evason, C., Aoki, M., Rosado, M., Gupta, K., Mundet, B., Xu, K., Reparaz, J. S., Watanabe, K., Taniguchi, T., Dimitrov, D., Marinova, V., Verzhbitskiy, I. A., Eda, G., Garcia, J. H., Roche, S., Sierra, Juan. F., & Valenzuela, S. O. (2026). Strain-Mediated Lattice Reconstruction Enhances Ferromagnetism in Cr2Ge2Te6/WTe2 van der Waals Heterobilayers. Nano Letters, 26(16), 5434–5442. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.6c00201

Van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures enable tailored electronic and magnetic phases by stacking atomically thin layers with pristine interfaces. Here, we investigate fully 2D Cr2Ge2Te6/WTe2 heterostructures and identify a strong enhancement of ferromagnetism in Cr2Ge2Te6 (CGT). Magnetotransport measurements across multiple devices with WTe2 thicknesses ranging from monolayer to bulk reveal a robust anomalous Hall effect together with a more than two fold increase of the Curie temperature and substantially enhanced coercive fields. Interface microscopy confirms chemically abrupt vdW interfaces with no detectable interdiffusion, while control experiments rule out processing- or stray-field-induced artifacts. Our experiments and theoretical calculations demonstrate that interfacial charge transfer renders CGT conductive and that proximity-induced lattice distortions in CGT enhance exchange and magnetocrystalline anisotropy. These results establish strain-mediated lattice reconstruction as a strategy for engineering high-temperature magnetic order in 2D heterostructures and clarify that modifications within the magnetic layer itself can govern proximity effects in vdW stacks.

Publisher Copyright

This research was partially supported by the HEDOS Project (PID2022-143162OB-I00) funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and FEDER and by the Severo Ochoa Program CEX2021-001214-S. The authors acknowledge the ICN2 Research Support Division for providing access to laboratory facilities and technical assistance and the use of instrumentation as well as the technical advice provided by the Joint Electron Microscopy Center at ALBA (JEMCA) and funding from Grant IU16-014206 (METCAM-FIB) to ICN2 funded by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), with the support of the Ministry of Research and Universities, Generalitat de Catalunya. F.H. acknowledges funding through Grant JDC2023-052262-I funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+). M.T.-S. acknowledges support by the Ajuts Joan Oró Grant for the recruitment of predoctoral research staff in training (2025 FI-1 00113), funded by the Department of Research and Universities of the Government of Catalonia and cofunded by the ESF+. D.L.E., J.H.G., and S.R. acknowledge funding from MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, under Grants PID2019-106684GB-I00 and PID2022-138283NB-I00 and by ERDF, and the ERC project AI4SPIN funded by Horizon Europe–European Research Council Executive Agency under Grant Agreement No. 101078370; MICIU with European funds-NextGenerationEU (PRTR-C17.I1); and 2021 SGR 00997 funded by Generalitat de Catalunya. They also acknowledge the use of HPC resources at MareNostrum and the technical support provided by Barcelona Supercomputing Center (RES-FI-2025-3-0058). K.X. and J.S.R. acknowledge financial support by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 under Grants PDC2023-145934-I00 and PID2024-162811NB-I00 and by the Severo Ochoa Centres of Excellence Program under Grant CEX2023-001263-S. V.M. and D.D. acknowledge funding from the Bulgarian National Science Fund (BNSF) under Project No. KP-06-H 98/7. G.E. acknowledges support from the Ministry of Education (MOE), Singapore, under an Academic Research Fund Tier 1 Grant (A-8001995-00-00).

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Nano Letters, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see 10.1021/acs.nanolett.6c00201.

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