Electrical switching of magnetic order in an orbital Chern insulator

Magnetism typically arises from the joint effect of Fermi statistics and repulsive Coulomb interactions, which favours ground states with non-zero electron spin. As a result, controlling spin magnetism with electric fields-a longstanding technological goal in spintronics and multiferroics(1,2)-can be achieved only indirectly. Here we experimentally demonstrate direct electric-field control of magnetic states in an orbital Chern insulator(3-6), a magnetic system in which non-trivial band topology favours long-range order of orbital angular momentum but the spins are thought to remain disordered(7-14). We use van der Waals heterostructures consisting of a graphene monolayer rotationally faulted with respect to a Bernal-stacked bilayer to realize narrow and topologically non-trivial valley-projected moire minibands(15-17). At fillings of one and three electrons per moire unit cell within these bands, we observe quantized anomalous Hall effects(18) with transverse resistance approximately equal to h/2e(2) (where h is Planck's constant and e is the charge on the electron), which is indicative of spontaneous polarization of the system into a single-valley-projected band with a Chern number equal to two. At a filling of three electrons per moire unit cell, we find that the sign of the quantum anomalous Hall effect can be reversed via field-effect control of the chemical potential; moreover, this transition is hysteretic, which we use to demonstrate non-volatile electric-field-induced reversal of the magnetic state. A theoretical analysis(19) indicates that the effect arises from the topological edge states, which drive a change in sign of the magnetization and thus a reversal in the favoured magnetic state. Voltage control of magnetic states can be used to electrically pattern non-volatile magnetic-domain structures hosting chiral edge states, with applications ranging from reconfigurable microwave circuit elements to ultralow-power magnetic memories. Non-volatile electrical switching of magnetic order in an orbital Chern insulator is experimentally demonstrated using a moire heterostructure and analysis shows that the effect is driven by topological edge states.