Magnetic and electronic properties of Fe3O4/PtSe2/Fe3O4 junctions

Abstract Two-dimensional (2D) materials with single or a few-atomic layers have attracted significant attention from the scientific community due to their transport properties and potential for technological applications. A variety of 2D materials beyond graphene with different bandgaps have been synthesized in recent years. One of them is platinum diselenide (PtSe2) with the bandgap energy of 1.2 eV at one monolayer. However, the low throughput synthesis of high quality 2D thin films has thus far hindered the development of PtSe2 devices. In this work methods of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) have been used to fabricate PtSe2 thin films. We have fabricated a prototypical PtSe2 based magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) with Fe3O4 electrodes. For this purpose, Fe3O4-PtSe2-Fe3O4 trilayers were grown on MgO(1 0 0) substrate. The magnetoresistance of the trilayer at room temperature indicates that PtSe2 is a potential candidate as a barrier material for Fe3O4 based magnetic tunnel junctions.