Purely Electric-Field Control of Topological Magnetism in Two-Dimensional Magnets

Abstract

Electrical control of topological magnetism is central to realizing energy-efficient topological spintronics. Yet most electric-field approaches modify the competing magnetic interactions through a nonselective rearrangement of low-energy electronic states, yielding coarse magnetic phase control that often requires external magnetic fields to stabilize topological quasiparticles, while few schemes solely based on electric fields are restricted to specific conducting materials. Here, we establish a general approach for purely electric-field control of topological magnetism, in which an applied electric field electrostatically dopes a selected orbital-angular-momentum-polarized band edge of a two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) magnetic semiconductor via proximity to an adjacent nonmagnetic vdW metal. We show that the resulting electrostatic doping predominantly tunes magnetic anisotropy of the 2D magnet, while leaving exchange interaction and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction nearly unchanged, thereby reversibly driving the system through ferromagnetic, skyrmion, spiral, and bimeron phases. We demonstrate this mechanism for CrBr3/graphene and Cr2Ge2Te6/TaS2 vdW heterostructures hosting electron and hole pockets of different orbital characters. These results establish a broadly applicable strategy for purely electric-field control in topological spintronics.