  Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction is at heart of chiral magnetism and causes
emergence of rich non-collinear and unique topological spin textures in
magnetic materials, including cycloids, helices, skyrmions and other. Here we
show that strong intrinsic DMI lives in recently discovered van der Waals
magnetic two-dimensional materials, due to the sizeable spin-orbit coupling on
the non-magnetic ions. In a perfect crystal, this intrinsic DMI remains hidden,
but is released with any break of point-inversion symmetry between magnetic
ions, unavoidable at the sample edges, at ever present structural defects, with
any buckling of the material, or with non-uniform strain on an uneven
substrate. We demonstrate such release of latent chirality on an archetypal
magnetic monolayer - CrI3, and discuss the plethora of realizable DMI patterns,
their control by nanoengineering and tuning by external electric field, thereby
opening novel routes in 2D magnetoelectronics.
