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Title: Realization of ordered magnetic skyrmions in thin films at ambient conditions

Abstract

Magnetic skyrmions have captivated physicists due to their topological nature and novel physical properties. In addition, skyrmions hold significant promise for future information technologies. A key barrier to realizing skyrmion-based devices has been stabilizing these spin structures under ambient conditions. In this paper, we demonstrate that the tunable magnetic properties of amorphous Fe/Gd mulitlayers enable the formation of skyrmion lattices which are stable over a large temperature and magnetic field parameter space, including room temperature and zero magnetic field. These skyrmions, having a hybrid nature displaying both Bloch-type and Néel-type characteristics, are stabilized by dipolar interactions rather than Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions, typically considered a requirement for the generation of skyrmions. Small angle neutron scattering (SANS) was used in combination with soft x-ray microscopy to provide a unique, multiscale probe of the local and long-range order of these structures. The hexagonal lattice seen in SANS results from the hybrid skyrmion picture obtained with micromagnetic simulations. These results identify a pathway to engineer controllable skyrmion phases in thin film geometries which are stable at ambient conditions.

Authors:
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6]; ORCiD logo [7];  [8];  [9]
+ Show Author Affiliations
  1. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  2. Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, San Diego, CA (United States)
  3. National Inst. of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, MD (United States)
  4. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  5. Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States)
  6. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Ulsan National Inst. of Science and Technology, Ulsan (Republic of Korea); DGIST, Daegu (Republic of Korea)
  7. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States)
  8. Univ. of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA (United States)
  9. National Inst. of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, MD (United States); Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
OSTI Identifier:
1570914
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1582045
Grant/Contract Number:  
AC05-00OR22725; AC02-05CH11231
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Physical Review Materials
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 3; Journal Issue: 10; Journal ID: ISSN 2475-9953
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
36 MATERIALS SCIENCE

Citation Formats

Desautels, Ryan D., DeBeer-Schmitt, Lisa, Montoya, Sergio A., Borchers, Julie A., Je, Soong-Geun, Tang, Nan, Im, Mi-Young, Fitzsimmons, Michael R., Fullerton, Eric E., and Gilbert, Dustin A. Realization of ordered magnetic skyrmions in thin films at ambient conditions. United States: N. p., 2019. Web. doi:10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.3.104406.
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Desautels, Ryan D., DeBeer-Schmitt, Lisa, Montoya, Sergio A., Borchers, Julie A., Je, Soong-Geun, Tang, Nan, Im, Mi-Young, Fitzsimmons, Michael R., Fullerton, Eric E., & Gilbert, Dustin A. Realization of ordered magnetic skyrmions in thin films at ambient conditions. United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.3.104406
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Desautels, Ryan D., DeBeer-Schmitt, Lisa, Montoya, Sergio A., Borchers, Julie A., Je, Soong-Geun, Tang, Nan, Im, Mi-Young, Fitzsimmons, Michael R., Fullerton, Eric E., and Gilbert, Dustin A. Thu . "Realization of ordered magnetic skyrmions in thin films at ambient conditions". United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.3.104406. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1570914.
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@article{osti_1570914,
title = {Realization of ordered magnetic skyrmions in thin films at ambient conditions},
author = {Desautels, Ryan D. and DeBeer-Schmitt, Lisa and Montoya, Sergio A. and Borchers, Julie A. and Je, Soong-Geun and Tang, Nan and Im, Mi-Young and Fitzsimmons, Michael R. and Fullerton, Eric E. and Gilbert, Dustin A.},
abstractNote = {Magnetic skyrmions have captivated physicists due to their topological nature and novel physical properties. In addition, skyrmions hold significant promise for future information technologies. A key barrier to realizing skyrmion-based devices has been stabilizing these spin structures under ambient conditions. In this paper, we demonstrate that the tunable magnetic properties of amorphous Fe/Gd mulitlayers enable the formation of skyrmion lattices which are stable over a large temperature and magnetic field parameter space, including room temperature and zero magnetic field. These skyrmions, having a hybrid nature displaying both Bloch-type and Néel-type characteristics, are stabilized by dipolar interactions rather than Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions, typically considered a requirement for the generation of skyrmions. Small angle neutron scattering (SANS) was used in combination with soft x-ray microscopy to provide a unique, multiscale probe of the local and long-range order of these structures. The hexagonal lattice seen in SANS results from the hybrid skyrmion picture obtained with micromagnetic simulations. These results identify a pathway to engineer controllable skyrmion phases in thin film geometries which are stable at ambient conditions.},
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.3.104406},
journal = {Physical Review Materials},
number = 10,
volume = 3,
place = {United States},
year = {2019},
month = {10}
}
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Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.3.104406
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Figures / Tables:

FIG. 1 FIG. 1: Cross sectional view of the multilayer film, with flux closure domains illustratively included at the top and bottom surfaces. The chirality of the domains (blue) follows the magnetic dipole fields (red). In the middle of the film, the moments orient in-plane, enclosing the core of the skyrmion asmore » observed with LTEM. The dipole fields are along the film normal direction at the film’s center, orthogonal to the spins, and thus the dipole fields do not define a chirality. Since there is no other symmetry breaking mechanism (e.g. DMI or geometry), the moments at the equatorial band have no net chirality, again consistent with the LTEM.« less
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    FIG. 1 (p. 6)figure
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    FIG. 3 (p. 9)figure
    FIG. 4 (p. 11)figure
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    FIG. 6 (p. 14)figure
    FIG. 7 (p. 15)figure
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