Surface Termination-Enhanced Magnetism at Nickel Ferrite/2D Nanomaterial Interfaces: Implications for Spintronics

Engineering of interfacial magnetic properties provides an extra edge in designing heterostructures with desired properties for spintronics and spincaloritronics, without drastically changing the structure of the neighboring nonmagnetic material. Here, we report on the surface termination-enhanced magnetic properties of the ferrimagnetic insulator (FMI) nickel ferrite (NFO) with the inclusion of graphene (Gr) and monolayer hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). Depth-dependent X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements reveal the presence of a layer of adsorbed oxygen at the NFO/Gr and NFO/hBN interfaces. Magnetometry and transverse susceptibility measurements indicate that the inclusion of monolayer Gr increases the saturation magnetization (M_s) by 40% and decreases the effective magnetic anisotropy by 50% across 5 K ≤ T ≤ 300 K. A similar but less pronounced effect is observed for the inclusion of hBN. Density functional theory calculations further indicate that the increase in M_S due to the inclusion of Gr or hBN arises on oxygen-terminated NFO, as observed in XPS measurements. These results present ways for engineering strong interfacial magnetic effects in FMI/2D nanomaterial systems, controlling magnetism by surface termination, and developing advanced spinterfaces for applications in spincaloritronics and spin insulatronics.