Tuneable physical properties of ReI3 through ferroelectric polarization switching in 2D van der Waals multiferroic heterostructures

Ferroelectric switching of atom-thick van der Waals (vdW) magnets is desirable for the future advancement of multiferroic nanodevices. In this work, we systematically investigated the physical properties of a ReI3 layer in contact with an In2Se3 ferroelectric substrate using first-principles calculations. We demonstrated that a phase transition from ferromagnetic to antiferromagnetic occurs in the ReI3 layer under the polarization electric field of the In2Se3 layer, and the magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy is sharply reduced by 54% and 63% for upward and downward polarization directions, respectively. A semiconductor-to-metal transition occurs in the ReI3 layer as the electric polarization of the ferroelectric layer is switched. We further demonstrate that the electric polarization of the In2Se3 substrate breaks the inversion symmetry of the ReI3 layer and generates appreciable Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interactions between the magnetic moments of Re3+ ions. Furthermore, the DM interactions can be well controlled by the ferroelectric polarization of the In2Se3 layer, which enables nonvolatile electric control of AFM skyrmions in the ReI3/In2Se3 heterostructure. These results suggest a new strategy to tune the physical properties of ReI3 and may have potential application in future multiferroic devices. •We studied the physical properties of the ReI3/In2Se3 multiferroic heterostructure.•The ground state of the ReI3/In2Se3 heterostructure is antiferromagnetic.•The MAE of the ReI3 layer is sharply weakened in the ReI3/In2Se3 heterostructure.•A semiconductor-to-metal transition occurs when the FE polarization is switched.•The DMI has a substantial change under the switching FE polarization.