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Recently, ferromagnetism observed in monolayer two-dimensional (2D) materials has attracted attention due to the promise of its application in next-generation spintronics. Here, we predict a symmetry-breaking phase in 2D FeTe2 that differs from conventional transition metal ditellurides shows superior stability and room-temperature ferromagnetism. Through density functional theory calculations, we find the exchange interactions in FeTe2 consist of short-range superexchange and long-range oscillatory exchanges mediated by itinerant electrons. For six nearest neighbors, the exchange constants are calculated to be 50.95, 33.41, 2.70, 11.02, 14.46, and −4.12 meV. Furthermore, the strong relativistic effects on Te2+ induce giant out-of-plane exchange anisotropy and open up a significantly large spin wave gap (ΔSW) of 1.22 meV. All of this leads to robust ferromagnetism with the Tc surpassing 423 K, which is predicted by the renormalization group Monte Carlo method, sufficiently higher than room temperature. Our findings shed light on the promising future of FeTe2 in 2D magnetic research and spintronic applications.
Liu et al. (Wed,) studied this question.