Current-Induced Skyrmion Generation through Morphological Thermal Transitions in Chiral Ferromagnetic Heterostructures

Lemesh, Ivan; Litzius, Kai; Böttcher, Marie; Bassirian, Pedram; Kerber, Nico; Heinze, Daniel; Zázvorka, Jakub; Büttner, Felix; Caretta, Lucas; Mann, Maxwell; Weigand, Markus; Finizio, Simone; Raabe, Jörg; Im, Mi-Young; Stoll, Hermann; Schütz, Gisela; Dupé, Bertrand; Kläui, Mathias; Beach, Geoffrey S.  D.

doi:10.1002/adma.201805461

Title: Current-Induced Skyrmion Generation through Morphological Thermal Transitions in Chiral Ferromagnetic Heterostructures

Journal Article · 03 October 2018 · Advanced Materials

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201805461 · OSTI ID:1530325

^[1]; Litzius, Kai ^[2]; Böttcher, Marie ^[3]; Bassirian, Pedram ^[3]; Kerber, Nico ^[3]; Heinze, Daniel ^[3]; Zázvorka, Jakub ^[3]; Büttner, Felix ^[1]; Caretta, Lucas ^[1]; Mann, Maxwell ^[1]; Weigand, Markus ^[4]; Finizio, Simone ^[5]; Raabe, Jörg ^[5]; Im, Mi-Young ^[6]; Stoll, Hermann ^[4]; Schütz, Gisela ^[4]; Dupé, Bertrand ^[3]; Kläui, Mathias ^[7]; Beach, Geoffrey S. D. ^[1]

Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
Johannes Gutenberg Univ., Mainz (Germany); Graduate School of Excellence Materials Science in Mainz (Germany); Max Planck Inst. for Intelligent Systems, Stuttgart (Germany)
Johannes Gutenberg Univ., Mainz (Germany)
Max Planck Inst. for Intelligent Systems, Stuttgart (Germany)
Paul Scherrer Inst. (PSI), Villigen (Switzerland). Swiss Light Source
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Department of Emerging Materials Science, Daegu (Korea, Republic of); Ulsan National Inst. of Science and Technology (Korea, Republic of)
Johannes Gutenberg Univ., Mainz (Germany); Graduate School of Excellence Materials Science in Mainz (Germany)

Magnetic skyrmions promise breakthroughs in future memory and computing devices due to their inherent stability and small size. Their creation and current driven motion have been recently observed at room temperature, but the key mechanisms of their formation are not yet well-understood. Here it is shown that in heavy metal/ferromagnet heterostructures, pulsed currents can drive morphological transitions between labyrinth-like, stripe-like, and skyrmionic states. Using high-resolution X-ray microscopy, the spin texture evolution with temperature and magnetic field is imaged and it is demonstrated that with transient Joule heating, topological charges can be injected into the system, driving it across the stripe-skyrmion boundary. The observations are explained through atomistic spin dynamic and micromagnetic simulations that reveal a crossover to a global skyrmionic ground state above a threshold magnetic field, which is found to decrease with increasing temperature. It is demonstrated how by tuning the phase stability, one can reliably generate skyrmions by short current pulses and stabilize them at zero field, providing new means to create and manipulate spin textures in engineered chiral ferromagnets.

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Research Organization:: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE; USDOE Office of Science (SC)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231; SC0012371

OSTI ID:: 1530325

Journal Information:: Advanced Materials, Journal Name: Advanced Materials Journal Issue: 49 Vol. 30; ISSN 0935-9648

Publisher:: WileyCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Walker Breakdown with a Twist: Dynamics of Multilayer Domain Walls and Skyrmions Driven by Spin-Orbit Torque Lemesh, Ivan; Beach, Geoffrey S. D. Physical Review Applied, Vol. 12, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevapplied.12.044031	journal	October 2019
Computing and Memory Technologies based on Magnetic Skyrmions Vakili, Hamed; Zhou, Wei; Ma, Chung T. arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2101.09947	text	January 2021
Individual skyrmion manipulation by local magnetic field gradients Casiraghi, Arianna; Corte-León, Héctor; Vafaee, Mehran Communications Physics, Vol. 2, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-019-0242-5	journal	November 2019
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Walker Breakdown with a Twist: Dynamics of Multilayer Domain Walls and Skyrmions Driven by Spin-Orbit Torque Lemesh, Ivan; Beach, Geoffrey S. D. Physical Review Applied, Vol. 12, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevapplied.12.044031	journal	October 2019
Thermal nucleation and high-resolution imaging of submicrometer magnetic bubbles in thin thulium iron garnet films with perpendicular anisotropy Büttner, Felix; Mawass, Mohamad A.; Bauer, Jackson Physical Review Materials, Vol. 4, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevmaterials.4.011401	journal	January 2020
Individual skyrmion manipulation by local magnetic field gradients Casiraghi, Arianna; Corte-León, Héctor; Vafaee, Mehran Springer Nature https://doi.org/10.25358/openscience-248	text	January 2019
Individual skyrmion manipulation by local magnetic field gradients Casiraghi, Arianna; Corte-León, Héctor; Vafaee, Mehran arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1903.00367	text	January 2019
Walker breakdown with a twist: Dynamics of multilayer domain walls and skyrmions driven by spin-orbit torque Lemesh, Ivan; Beach, Geoffrey S. D. arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1910.07168	text	January 2019

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