Modulation of magnetic properties of trilayer MoS2/ZnO/VS2 van der Waals heterostructure via strain engineering for spintronics application

•Electronic and magnetic properties of MoS2/ZnO/VS2 trilayer van der Waals (vdW) heterostructure were investigated for the first time.•Type II Band alignment was observed for the trilayer.•Ferromagnetic ground state with Curie temperature 65 K.•Strain engineering of the trilayer. MoS2/ZnO/VS2 trilayer van der Waals (vdW) heterostructure is reported for its electronic and magnetic properties for the first time. Heyd-Scuseria-Ernzerhof (HSE) hybrid functional is used to compute the electronic band structure and it is observed that the heterojunction exhibits an indirect transition. The trilayer showed type II band alignment. This along with the Charge Density Difference (CDD) isosurface and plot showed the charge transfer in both the spin channels from ZnO to both MoS2 and VS2 monolayer. Monte Carlo (MC) simulation revealed a low Curie temperature (TC) value of 65 K. Effect of compressive and tensile biaxial strain on the trilayer was studied where all the strained system turned metallic. Under both biaxial tensile and compressive strain, the TC at first increased and then gradually decreased which hints at tuning the TC with strain engineering. Thus, the metallic strained MoS2/ZnO/VS2 trilayer has potential application in the spintronics devices.