Ferromagnetism in exfoliated tungsten disulfide nanosheets

Two-dimensional-layered transition metal dichalcogenides nanosheets have attracted tremendous attention for their promising applications in spintronics because the atomic-thick nanosheets can not only enhance the intrinsic properties of their bulk counterparts, but also give birth to new promising properties. In this paper, ultrathin tungsten disulfide (WS2) nanosheets were gotten by liquid exfoliation route from its bulk form using dimethylformamide (DMF). Compared to the antiferromagnetism bulk WS2, ultrathin WS2 nanosheets show intrinsic room-temperature ferromagnetism (FM) with the maximized saturation magnetization of 0.004 emu/g at 10 K, where the appearance of FM in the nanosheets is partly due to the presence of zigzag edges in the magnetic ground state at the grain boundaries.