Electric-Field-Driven Dual Vacancies Evolution in Ultrathin Nanosheets Realizing Reversible Semiconductor to Half-Metal Transition

Abstract

Fabricating a flexible room-temperature ferromagnetic resistive-switching random access memory (RRAM) device is of fundamental importance to integrate nonvolatile memory and spintronics both in theory and practice for modern information technology and has the potential to bring about revolutionary new foldable information-storage devices. Here, we show that a relatively low operating voltage (+1.4 V/–1.5 V, the corresponding electric field is around 20 000 V/cm) drives the dual vacancies evolution in ultrathin SnO₂ nanosheets at room temperature, which causes the reversible transition between semiconductor and half-metal, accompanyied by an abrupt conductivity change up to 10³ times, exhibiting room-temperature ferromagnetism in two resistance states. Positron annihilation spectroscopy and electron spin resonance results show that the Sn/O dual vacancies in the ultrathin SnO₂ nanosheets evolve to isolated Sn vacancy under electric field, accounting for the switching behavior of SnO₂ ultrathin nanosheets; on the other hand, the different defect types correspond to different conduction natures, realizing the transition between semiconductor and half-metal. Our result represents a crucial step to create new a information-storage device realizing the reversible transition between semiconductor and half-metal with flexibility and room-temperature ferromagnetism at low energy consumption. The as-obtained half-metal in the low-resistance state broadens the application of the device in spintronics and the semiconductor to half-metal transition on the basis of defects evolution and also opens up a new avenue for exploring random access memory mechanisms and finding new half-metals for spintronics