Recently, Professor Xu Xiaohong and Professor Wang Fang from Shanxi Normal University, in collaboration with Researcher Xue Dingjiang from the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, reported a template selection strategy for bottom-up synthesis of CrSbSe₃ nanoribbons.

They successfully achieved the controlled preparation of one-dimensional (1D) ferromagnetic CrSbSe₃ nanoribbons, which exhibit typical semiconductor behavior and ferromagnetism, confirming the intrinsic ferromagnetic properties of 1D CrSbSe₃ semiconductors.

With the rise of cloud computing technology, the scale and complexity of data storage have reached unprecedented levels, placing increasing demands on storage technologies. Magnetic semiconductors, as a new class of spintronic materials, hold the potential to simultaneously enable logic operations, information processing, and storage.

As a result, low-dimensional magnetic semiconductors have become an inevitable trend in the construction of nanoscale spintronic devices, aiming to minimize device size and achieve high-density integration. However, realizing such low-dimensional magnetic semiconductors remains challenging, especially for 1D ferromagnetic semiconductors with higher magnetic anisotropy, larger aspect ratios, and greater potential for nanoscale spintronic devices.

CrSbSe₃, as the only experimentally verified 1D material that possesses both ferromagnetic and semiconductor properties, is of significant importance in exploring its characteristics and applications. Until now, CrSbSe₃ nanocrystals could only be obtained through top-down exfoliation methods.

In response, the team reported a bottom-up solution method for synthesizing CrSbSe₃  nanoribbons. By comparing the formation energies of potential binary templates and ternary target products, they selected Sb2Se₃, a material with a 1D crystal structure, as the template. Half of the Sb atoms in Sb2Se₃ were replaced with Cr atoms, promoting the phase transition from Sb2Se₃ to CrSbSe₃. The synthesized CrSbSe₃ nanoribbons were approximately 5 µm in length, 80 to 120 nm in width, and about 5 nm thick. The nanoribbons exhibited soft magnetic behavior at temperatures below the Curie temperature of 71 K.

Magnetic and electrical tests conducted on individual CrSbSe₃ nanoribbons demonstrated their typical semiconductor behavior and ferromagnetism, further confirming the intrinsic ferromagnetic properties of the 1D CrSbSe₃ semiconductor. This work provides a novel bottom-up template synthesis method for ternary 1D nanoribbons, laying the foundation for the development and application of 1D ferromagnetic semiconductors.

(Photo credit: Shanxi Normal University)