High Curie temperature and strain induced semiconductor-metal transition with spin reorientation transition in two-dimensional CrPbTe3 monolayer.

One of the major obstacles for Cr based two-dimensional materials such as CrI3, CrSiTe3, and CrGeTe3 for spintronics applications is their low Curie temperature. Herein, we investigated the strain-induced magnetic properties of two-dimensional CrPbTe3 (CPT) monolayer belonged to the members of Cr based two-dimensional family. We explored the possibility of fabrication of 2D layer through the mechanical stability, dynamical stability, formation energy, cohesive energy, and thermal stability calculations. We found ferromagnetic ground state and the pristine CrPbTe3 monolayer had an indirect band gap of 0.25 eV with an in-plane magnetic anisotropy of -1.37 meV/cell. The Curie temperature was 110 K and this is much larger than that of CrI3, CrSiTe3, and CrGeTe3. Under the 4 % tensile strain, the band gap was increased to 0.45 eV and also the Curie temperature was enhanced to 150 K. We found strain-induced semiconductor-metal transition at 3 % compressive strain and also the spin reorientation transition from in-plane to perpendicular magnetic anisotropy at 4 % compressive strain and the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy energy was almost three times larger than that of the CrGeTe3 layer. Our finding may suggest that the CrPbTe3 system can be utilized for spintronics and straintronic applications.