Proximity-Induced Interfacial Room-Temperature Ferromagnetism in Semiconducting FeGeTe.

The discoveries of two-dimensional ferromagnetism and magnetic semiconductors highly enrich the magnetic material family for constructing spin-based electronic devices, but with an acknowledged challenge that the Curie temperature () is usually far below room temperature. Many efforts such as voltage control and magnetic ion doping are currently underway to enhance the functional temperature, in which the involvement of additional electrodes or extra magnetic ions limits their application in practical devices. Here we demonstrate that the magnetic proximity, a robust effect but with elusive mechanisms, can induce room-temperature ferromagnetism at the interface between sputtered Pt and semiconducting FeGeTe, both of which do not show ferromagnetism at 300 K.