Room temperature skyrmion ground state stabilized through interlayer exchange coupling

Journal Article · Mon Jun 15 04:00:00 EDT 2015 · Applied Physics Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4922726· OSTI ID:22482011

Chen, Gong; Schmid, Andreas K. ^[1]; Mascaraque, Arantzazu ^[2]; N'Diaye, Alpha T. ^[3]

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1. NCEM, Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720 (United States)
2. Depto. Física de Materiales, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 28040 Madrid (Spain)
3. Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720 (United States)

Possible magnetic skyrmion device applications motivate the search for structures that extend the stability of skyrmion spin textures to ambient temperature. Here, we demonstrate an experimental approach to stabilize a room temperature skyrmion ground state in chiral magnetic films via exchange coupling across non-magnetic spacer layers. Using spin polarized low-energy electron microscopy to measure all three Cartesian components of the magnetization vector, we image the spin textures in Fe/Ni films. We show how tuning the thickness of a copper spacer layer between chiral Fe/Ni films and perpendicularly magnetized Ni layers permits stabilization of a chiral stripe phase, a skyrmion phase, and a single domain phase. This strategy to stabilize skyrmion ground states can be extended to other magnetic thin film systems and may be useful for designing skyrmion based spintronics devices.

• OSTI ID: 22482011
• Journal Information: Applied Physics Letters, Journal Name: Applied Physics Letters Journal Issue: 24 Vol. 106; ISSN APPLAB; ISSN 0003-6951
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
CHIRALITY
COPPER
COUPLING
DESIGN
ELECTRON MICROSCOPY
EQUIPMENT
GROUND STATES
IMAGES
MAGNETIZATION
SPACERS
SPIN
SPIN ORIENTATION
STABILIZATION
TEMPERATURE RANGE 0273-0400 K
THIN FILMS