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Title: Large Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction induced by chemisorbed oxygen on a ferromagnet surface

Journal Article · · Science Advances
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [3];  [3];  [1]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [3]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [5];  [6]; ORCiD logo [7];  [3]; ORCiD logo [8]; ORCiD logo [9]
  1. Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States)
  2. Univ. Complutense Madrid (Spain)
  3. Forschungszentrum Juelich and JARA (Germany)
  4. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of Hamburg (Germany)
  5. Nanjing Univ. (China)
  6. Univ. of Hamburg (Germany)
  7. Univ. Autonoma de Madrid (Spain)
  8. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  9. Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States); Georgetown Univ., Washington, DC (United States)

The Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) is an antisymmetric exchange interaction that stabilizes chiral spin textures. It is induced by inversion symmetry breaking in noncentrosymmetric lattices or at interfaces. Recently, interfacial DMI has been found in magnetic layers adjacent to transition metals due to the spin-orbit coupling and at interfaces with graphene due to the Rashba effect. We report direct observation of strong DMI induced by chemisorption of oxygen on a ferromagnetic layer at room temperature. The sign of this DMI and its unexpectedly large magnitude—despite the low atomic number of oxygen—are derived by examining the oxygen coverage–dependent evolution of magnetic chirality. We find that DMI at the oxygen/ferromagnet interface is comparable to those at ferromagnet/transition metal interfaces; it has enabled direct tailoring of skyrmion’s winding number at room temperature via oxygen chemisorption. This result extends the understanding of the DMI, opening up opportunities for the chemisorption-related design of spin-orbitronic devices.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); National Science Foundation (NSF); Univ. of California; National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation of Spain (MINECO); Comunidad de Madrid; Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA); European Union (EU); German Research Foundation (DFG); National Key Research and Development Program of China; National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC); MECD (Spain)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231; DMR-1610060; DMR-1905468; MRP-17-454963; 2018-NE-2861; MAT2017-87072-C4-2-P; S2018/NMT4321; HR0011831554; H2020-INFRAEDI-2018-1; SPP-2137; SFB-1238; 748006; 2017YFA0303202; 11734006; 51571109; MAT2014-52477; FIS2017-82415-R; PRX17/00557
OSTI ID:
1695752
Journal Information:
Science Advances, Vol. 6, Issue 33; ISSN 2375-2548
Publisher:
AAASCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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