To simulate the adsorption of TM atoms on Janus WSSe monolayer, we first construct a monolayer WSSe supercell consisting of 48 atoms, as shown in the Figure 1(a). Pristine Janus WSSe monolayer possesses a spatial C3v symmetry and exhibits the sandwich structure with one layer of S atoms, one layer of W atoms, and one layer of Se atoms. The monolayer thickness is calculated to be 3.35 Å. The planar projection shows an ideal hexagonal honeycomb structure with a lattice constant of 3.24 Å. The bond lengths of W-S (dW-S) and W-Se (dW-Se) are 2.42 Å and 2.54 Å, respectively, and the bond angle θS-W-Se is 81.76°, which are consistent with the previous reports [37]. Figure 1(b) shows the planar average electrostatic potential energy of the monolayer WSSe, where Z0 is the thickness of the unit cell, Z is a coordinate variable, and Z/Z0 means the relative position in the unit cell. As expected, the broken mirror symmetry along the Z direction results in the different potential energies on the S and Se surfaces, and the S surface has the larger electrostatic potential. Meanwhile, we also calculated the spin-resolved DOS of Janus WSSe monolayer. As shown in Figure 1(c), the DOS for the spin-up and spin-down channels are symmetrically distributed, indicating that the ground state is non-magnetic. It can also be seen that the band gap of Janus WSSe monolayer is about 1.7 eV, which is between that of WS2 [38] and WSe2 [39].
To induce magnetism in Janus WSSe, five different kinds of 3d-TM atoms (Co, Fe, Mn, Cr, and V) were adopted to adsorb on the surface of monolayer WSSe. On account of the structural symmetry, three possible adsorption sites are considered for atom adsorption on either the S or Se layer. As shown in Figure 2, the three cases are on the top of W atom (labeled as TWS or TWSe), on the hollow of hexagonal ring (labeled as HS or HSe), and on the top of S (Se) atom (labeled as TS or TSe). The total energies for these configurations are calculated to determine the most stable adsorption site. The results are shown in Table 1. It is clearly seen that when the TM atom is located on TWS or TWSe, the system has the lowest energy, indicating that the top of W atom is the most stable adsorption site. Hence, all the following calculations of electronic structures and magnetic properties are based on this configuration. Table 2 lists the calculated results including the bond length (dW-S, dW-Se, and dTM-S(Se)), the height difference (∆h) between the upper layer S(Se) atom and the TM atom, the total magnetic moment MT, the local magnetic moment ML of TM atom, and MAE. Obviously, the structure parameters of dW-S and dW-Se are different from that of the primitive Janus WSSe. For the case that the TM atoms are adsorbed on the S-side of WSSe, the dW-S is elongated by comparing with that in primitive Janus WSSe (2.41 Å), whereas the dW-Se is almost kept same (2.54 Å). Similarly, this behavior occurs in the case that TM atoms are adsorbed on the Se-side, where the dW-Se is also expanded. This is because that the covalent interaction between the TM atoms and the neighboring S(Se) atoms weakens the coupling between W and S(Se), and then leads to the extension of the W-S(Se) bond. In addition, the dTM-S(Se) and the ∆h for the different adsorption surface are distinct. They exhibit the smaller value for the S adsorbing surface, which is owing to the stronger electronegativity for the S atom, as revealed in Figure 1(b).
In the following, we focus on the magnetic behavior of Janus WSSe after the adsorption of TM atoms. As shown in Table 2, the distinguished magnetism for the different configurations is observed. A maximal MT of 6 μB is obtained in Cr-adsorbed system. Interestingly, different adsorption surfaces do not cause an obvious difference in the MT, albeit there is a relatively big difference in the ML. The calculated ML are 0.92, 1.83, 2.73, 4.80, and 2.90 μB on the S surface, and 0.93, 1.88, 2.78, 4.86, and 2.98 μB on the Se surface for Co, Fe, Mn, Cr, and V adatoms, respectively. Notably, the ML on the S surface is always smaller than that on the Se surface for each kind of TM adatom, indicating the stronger induced magnetism in Janus WSSe for the case of S adsorbing surface.
To gain insight into the magnetic properties of the different systems, the spin-resolved total DOS is calculated with the results shown in Figure 3. The positive and negative values denote the majority and minority spin channels, respectively, and the Fermi level is set to be zero. The majority and minority spin states in all the systems exhibit asymmetric characterization, confirming the existence of the magnetism. Compared with the DOS of pure Janus WSSe shown in Figure 1(c), some new impurity states appear in the bandgap in all the systems. These impurity states are mainly attributed to the TM-3d states, a small amount of hybridization of the first nearest S-3p or Se-3p states, and the second nearest W-5d states [22]. Due to the localization of TM-3d orbitals, the impurity states show a narrow energy range. Notably, in the case of Co, Fe, and Mn adsorptions, the induced impurity states around Fermi level only distribute in the minority spin channel, demonstrating a 100% spin polarization. Whereas for the other two cases, there are only the majority spin states in the band gap. In addition, due to the influence of the internal electrostatic potential for the different adsorption surfaces, the energy level and intensity of impurity states are slightly different. These results suggest that the magnetic properties strongly depend on the adsorbed element and the adsorbent chalcogen layer.
To further reveal the origin of magnetism in different systems, the differential charge densities are calculated. As shown in Figure 4, there are strong negative differential charge densities around TM atoms and the nearest neighboring chalcogen atoms. While in the middle of the TM-S(Se) bond, significant charge accumulations are observed. This means that the TM atoms and the chalcogen atoms are combined by covalent bonds. It is worth noting that the charge accumulation between TM-S bonds is more evident than that between TM-Se bonds, which indicates the stronger covalent interaction and the shorter bond length. Meanwhile, a small number of charges are accumulated between the TM atom and the lower W atom due to the internal electric field along the z direction. The charge accumulations in the case of Cr and V adsorption are smaller than that in the other cases, which is consistent with the relatively long bond length shown in Table 2. The transfer of charges between the TM atoms and the WSSe layer leads to the decrease of the unpaired electrons in TM atoms, which reduces the magnetic moment of the TM atom on the one hand, and induces the magnetism of the WSSe on the other hand.
The magnetic anisotropy for different systems is investigated as well. The calculated results are shown in Table 2. Positive and negative MAE indicate the vertical and parallel easy magnetization axis of the system, respectively. The Cr- and V- adsorbed systems have the negative MAE, while the Mn- and Co- adsorbed systems show positive MAE, demonstrating that their easy magnetization axis are in-plane and out-of-plane, respectively. Different adsorption surfaces cause slight changes in MAE, but do not give rise to the changes in their easy magnetization axis. Interestingly, the characteristics in the Fe-adsorbed system is completely different. Its easy magnetization axis switches from the in-plane (MAE: -0.95 meV) to the out-of-plane (MAE: 2.66 meV) when the adsorbing surface changes from Se to S.
To better understand the mechanism of the changed MAE in Fe-absorbed system, we calculated the Fe-3d orbital-decomposed DOS with the results shown in Figure 5. According to the second-order perturbation theory [23, 40-42], the MAE arising from the SOC can be approximately formulated as:

where σ↓(↑), μ↓(↑) and Eσ, Eμ denote the eigenstates and eigenvalues of the occupied (unoccupied) states with spin state (↓or↑), respectively; ξ represents the strength of SOC; Lz and Lx stand for the angular momenta operators. The SOC is regarded as the perturbative term in the Hamiltonian, and the MAE is expressed as the energy difference between the occupied states and the unoccupied states through the coupling of angular momenta Lz and Lx. In general, MAE is determined by non-zero elements in Lz and Lx matrices near the Fermi level. As for the same spin states (↓↓or ↑↑), when the occupied and unoccupied states have the same magnetic quantum number m, they make a positive contribution to the MAE under the action of the operator Lz; whereas when they have different m, a negative contribution to the MAE is made through the action of the operator Lx. As for the different spin states(↓↑ or ↑↓), the contribution is just the opposite. The non-zero matrix elements include < xz | Lz | yz > = 1, < xy | LZ | x2-y2 > = 2, < z2| Lx | xz, yz > = , < xy | Lx | xz, yz > = 1, < x2- y2 | Lx | xz, yz > = 1. In our case, as shown in Figure 5(a) and (b), only the minority spin states appear near the Fermi level, so it determines the MAE. According to ligand-field theory, the C3v symmetry makes the degenerated Fe-3d orbitals splitted into three kinds of states: single state a (dz2, |m| = 0), degenerated states e1 (dyz, dxz, |m| = 1) and e2 (dxy, dx2-y2, |m| = 2). As shown in Figure 5(c-g), when Fe is adsorbed on the S surface, the DOS mainly includes the dxz, dyz, dxy and dx2-y2 minority spin states, and a significant positive contribution to MAE comes from the spin-conservation term < xz | Lz | yz >=1 and < xy | Lz | x2-y2>=2, whereas the relatively weak negative contribution is from the spin-conservation term < xy | Lx | xz, yz > = 1, < x2- y2 | Lx | xz, yz > = 1. As a result, a positive MAE of 2.66 meV is achieved. As for the case of Fe adsorbed on Se surface, the dxz and dyz minority spin states dramatically reduces, and as the result, the MAE reduces to -0.95 meV owing to the significant decrease of the positive contribution term < xz | Lz | yz >.