Twisted magnetic van der Waals structures investigated with XMCD and coherent imaging

Stacking engineering opens the door to the controlled breaking of different symmetries of a condensed matter system, enabling novel electronic and magnetic properties. For instance, parallel stacking of different pieces of the same crystal has the potential to enable the emergence of ferroelectric order, and twisted stacking of magnetic and even non-magnetic 2D materials allow for emerging magnetic properties and asymmetric magnetic exchange interactions, and altogether, multiferroicity in van der Waals materials. We are working on achieving some of these emergent properties in twisted samples of the Fe3GeTe2 family, and propose to investigate them with XMCD and coherent imaging, enabling to look at magnetic properties at the atomic level and with nanoscale resolution.