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    Microscopic Evidence of Spin-Driven Multiferroicity and Topological Spin Textures in Monolayer NiI2

    Haitao Wang1,*, Tianxing Jiang1,*, Weiyi Pan2,*, Xu Wang1, Hongyu Wang1, Junchao Tian1, Lianchuang Li1,4, Dongming Zhao1, Qingle Zhang1 et al.

    Chenxi Wang1, Ying Yang1, Hongjun Xiang1,4, Changsong Xu1,4,5,†, Donglai Feng3,7,‡, and Tong Zhang1,5,6,7,§

    • 1Department of Physics, State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics and Advanced Material Laboratory, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200438, China
    • 2State Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Quantum Physics and Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China
    • 3New Cornerstone Laboratory, Hefei National Laboratory, Hefei, 230088, China
    • 4Key Laboratory of Computational Physical Sciences (Ministry of Education), Institute of Computational Physical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China
    • 5Hefei National Laboratory, Hefei, 230088, China
    • 6Shanghai Research Center for Quantum Sciences, Shanghai, 201315, China
    • 7Collaborative Innovation Center for Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing 210093, China

    • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
    • †Contact author: csxu@fudan.edu.cn
    • ‡Contact author: dlfeng@hfnl.cn
    • §Contact author: tzhang18@fudan.edu.cn

    Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 026402 – Published 14 January, 2026

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/4hzc-bm2f

    Abstract

    In type-II multiferroics, noncollinear spin textures are expected to induce electric polarization directly, leading to strong magnetoelectric coupling. Realizing such spin-driven multiferroicity in two-dimensional (2D) systems, and elucidating the interplay between local spins and electric polarization, are of both fundamental and technological importance. Here, using vectorial spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy, we investigated the spin-driven multiferroicity in monolayer NiI2 at atomic scale. We identify a canted spin-spiral state with fully determined spin rotation plane, accompanied by a 2Q charge modulation. At spin-spiral domain walls, we discover topological spin textures that are composed of meron-antimeron pairs. These textures are associated with a distinct charge pattern and notable band shifts, indicating local bound charges induced by variations of ferroelectricity at domain wall. Our observations are well captured by a realistic spin model incorporating Kitaev interactions and a generalized spin-current model of type-II multiferroicity. The findings provide microscopic evidence of spin-driven multiferroicity in an extreme 2D system and establish a platform for low-dissipation, electric-field control of topological spin textures.

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