Electrical control of exchange bias in Fe3GaTe2/Fe3GeTe2 van der Waals heterostructures

Magnetic heterojunctions with large exchange bias have promising applications in magnetic sensing and data storage. Ferromagnetic/antiferromagnetic (FM/AFM) heterojunctions are often used to generate exchange bias. However, the requirement of thermal manipulation makes controlling exchange bias in FM/AFM heterojunctions inconvenient. Herein, a Fe3GeTe2/Fe3GaTe2 FM/FM heterojunction is constructed to generate large exchange bias and reflected magnetic circular dichroism and magneto-optical Kerr effect techniques are used for the magnetic characterization of the heterojunction. The results show that strong magnetic coupling occurs at the Fe3GeTe2/Fe3GaTe2 interface when the temperature is <80 K. By fixing the spin direction of Fe3GaTe2, large exchange bias can be generated in Fe3GeTe2 because of the magnetic pinning effect. Furthermore, the strength of exchange bias can be manipulated by applying an ultralow current between Fe3GeTe2 and Fe3GaTe2 layers without changing the temperature. These results provide potential ways for generating and manipulating exchange bias in two-dimensional (2D) materials and pave the way for implementing the 2D van der Waals exchange bias effect in spintronic devices.