Chinese researchers have found a ductile ferromagnetic semiconductor, CrSiTe₃ crystal, which has good room-temperature ductility, excellent ferromagnetic properties, and stable semiconductor characteristics, making it a potential material for developing flexible spintronic devices.

Fulfilled by researchers from the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, in collaboration with Southeast University and the University of Science and Technology of China, the related findings were published online in “Advanced Materials” in October, 2025. Dr. Jun Luo, a former PhD graduate of the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, and Postdoctoral Researcher Jun Chen from Southeast University are the co-first authors of the paper. Prof. Jiawei Zhang and Prof. Xun Shi from the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, and Prof. Shuai Dong from Southeast University are the corresponding authors.

(https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202514083)

Inorganic semiconductors, with their richly tunable functional properties, are core materials for constructing electronic, energy, and information devices. However, these materials are typically brittle at room temperature and prone to fracture, leading to catastrophic failure. In recent years, a few inorganic semiconductor materials have been discovered to possess good ductility similar to metals, overturning the traditional perception of their intrinsic brittleness and providing new material support for developing emerging technologies such as flexible and deformable electronic devices. But current ductile inorganic semiconductors remain scarce, and their functional properties are mainly confined to electrical, thermal, or sensing applications, which restricts their scope of use.

Traditional ferromagnetic metals (such as Fe, Co, Ni) possess good ductility/plasticity and metallic conductivity, while inorganic ferromagnetic semiconductors combine excellent ferromagnetism with semiconductor characteristics, making them ideal materials for developing spintronic devices. However, currently known inorganic ferromagnetic semiconductors generally exhibit intrinsic brittleness, severely limiting their processability and potential application in flexible devices.

CrSiTe₃ is a layered ferromagnetic semiconductor material. The research team grew bulk CrSiTe₃ single crystals using the self-flux method. Mechanical property tests show that the bulk CrSiTe₃ single crystal exhibits good ductility at room temperature, capable of withstanding up to 12% tensile strain and 15% bending strain along the in-plane direction, and 40% compressive strain along the out-of-plane direction, comparable to reported typical ductile inorganic semiconductors.

To reveal the plastic deformation mechanism, the research team conducted first-principles calculations. They found that the excellent ductility of CrSiTe₃ originates from the low interlayer Te-Te slip energy barrier (47 mJ m^-2) and high cleavage energy (418 mJ m^-2), which allow easy interlayer slip without triggering cleavage. Chemical bond analysis indicates that during the slip process, the interlayer Te-Te interactions consistently maintain a certain strength of chemical bonding, making the material resistant to cleavage.

Magnetic measurements show that the Curie temperature of CrSiTe₃ remains stable at 34 K for both rolled and bent samples, with no significant changes in saturation magnetization or coercivity. Using Monte Carlo simulations, it was found that after interlayer slip leads to the formation of metastable structures like AAC stacking, the ferromagnetism of CrSiTe₃ remains stable. The magnetic anisotropy still aligns along the c-axis with only minor deviations, and the material has a Curie temperature (35±1 K) close to that of the original ABC stacking. These results indicate that plastic deformation has minimal impact on the macroscopic ferromagnetic properties.

This research expands the functionalities and application scope of ductile inorganic semiconductor materials. It is the first demonstration of the synergistic coexistence of ductility, semiconductor characteristics, and intrinsic ferromagnetic order in a bulk inorganic semiconductor, providing a novel material platform for the development of flexible spintronic devices.

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences Project for Young Scientists in Basic Research, and the Talent Plan of Shanghai Branch, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Figure 1. (A) Schematic of a spin field-effect transistor; (B) Elongation versus band gap for typical non-magnetic/ferromagnetic materials.

Figure 2. (A) Optical photograph of CrSiTe₃ bulk crystals after plastic deformation; (B-D) Engineering stress-strain curves of CrSiTe₃ bulk crystals from three-point bending test (B), tensile test (C), and compression test (D).