Anisotropy in Multiferroic CuCrP2S6

Multiferroic materials have great potential in non-volatile devices for low-power and ultra-high density information storage, owing to their unique characteristic of coexisting ferroelectric and ferromagnetic orders. The effective manipulation of their intrinsic anisotropy makes it promising to control the multiple degrees of freedom of the storage "medium". Here, we have discovered intriguing electrical and magnetic anisotropies within the intralayer of CuCrP2S6, a promising van der Waals multiferroic material. The in-plane uniaxial anisotropies of the current rectifications, magnetic properties and magnon modes are demonstrated and manipulated by electric direction/polarity, temperature variation and magnetic field. More important, we have observed spin-flop transition corresponding to specific magnon modes, and it is well supported by theoretical calculations. Our work provides the first observation of electrical and magnetic anisotropies with same easy axis in van der Waals multiferroics, which will stimulate novel device applications of artificial bionic synapses, multi-terminal spintronic chips and magnetoelectric devices.