Toward room-temperature nanoscale skyrmions in ultrathin films
arXiv:2002.05285 · doi:10.1038/s41524-020-00453-w
Abstract
Breaking the dilemma between small size and room temperature stability is a necessary prerequisite for skyrmion-based information technology. Here we demonstrate by means of rate theory and an atomistic spin Hamiltonian that the stability of isolated skyrmions in ultrathin ferromagnetic films can be enhanced by the concerted variation of magnetic interactions while keeping the skyrmion size unchanged. We predict film systems where the lifetime of sub-10 nm skyrmions can reach years at ambient conditions. The long lifetime of such small skyrmions is due to exceptionally large Arrhenius pre-exponential and the stabilizing effect of the energy barrier is insignificant at room temperature. A dramatic increase in the pre-exponential is achieved thanks to softening of magnon modes of the skyrmion, thereby increasing the entropy of the skyrmion with respect to the transition state for collapse. Increasing the number of skyrmion deformation modes should be a guiding principle for the realization of nanoscale, room-temperature stable skyrmions.
References in corpus (46)
- Observation of room temperature magnetic skyrmions and their current-driven dynamics in ultrathin Co films
- Blowing Magnetic Skyrmion Bubbles
- Direct Observation of the Skyrmion Hall Effect
- Skyrmions at room temperature : From magnetic thin films to magnetic multilayers
- Additive interfacial chiral interaction in multilayers for stabilization of small individual skyrmion at room temperature
- Room temperature chiral magnetic skyrmion in ultrathin magnetic nanostructures
- Skyrmion Hall Effect Revealed by Direct Time-Resolved X-Ray Microscopy
- Tunable Room Temperature Magnetic Skyrmions in Ir/Fe/Co/Pt Multilayers
- Anatomy of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction at Co/Pt Interfaces
- Field-Dependent Size and Shape of Single Magnetic Skyrmions
- Chiral skyrmions in thin magnetic films: new objects for magnetic storage technologies?
- Room-temperature current-induced generation and motion of sub-100nm skyrmions
- Full phase diagram of isolated skyrmions in a ferromagnet
- Electric field driven switching of individual magnetic skyrmions
- Current-induced skyrmion generation and dynamics in symmetric bilayers
- Magnon-skyrmion scattering in chiral magnets
- Significant Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction at Graphene-Ferromagnet Interfaces due to Rashba-effect
- Electrical detection of magnetic skyrmions by non-collinear magnetoresistance
- Method for finding mechanism and activation energy of magnetic transitions, applied to skyrmion and antivortex annihilation
- Inertia and chiral edge modes of a skyrmion magnetic bubble
- Thermal stability and topological protection of skyrmions in nanotracks
- Path to collapse for an isolated Néel skyrmion
- Vortices in thin ferromagnetic films and the skyrmion number
- Current-Driven Skyrmion Dynamics and Drive-Dependent Skyrmion Hall Effect in an Ultrathin Film
- Entropy-limited topological protection of skyrmions
- Engineering skyrmions in transition-metal multilayers for spintronics
- Internal modes of a skyrmion in the ferromagnetic background in chiral magnets
- Isolated zero field sub-10 nm skyrmions in ultrathin Co films
- Role of higher-order exchange interactions for skyrmion stability
- Spin eigen-excitations of the magnetic skyrmion and problem of the effective mass
- Thermal stability of metastable magnetic skyrmions: Entropic narrowing and significance of internal eigenmodes
- Paths to collapse for isolated skyrmions in few-monolayer ferromagnetic films
- Skyrmion lifetimes in ultrathin films
- B-T phase diagram of Pd/Fe/Ir(111) computed with parallel tempering Monte Carlo
- Band filling control of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in weakly ferromagnetic insulators
- Statistical Mechanics of Nonuniform Magnetization Reversal
- Energy surface and lifetime of magnetic skyrmions
- Paths to annihilation of first and second-order (anti)skyrmions via (anti)meron nucleation on the frustrated square lattice
- Inducing skyrmions in ultrathin Fe films by hydrogen exposure
- Duplication, collapse and escape of magnetic skyrmions revealed using a systematic saddle point search method
- The effect of confinement and defects on the thermal stability of skyrmions
- First-principles investigation of chiral magnetic properties in multilayers: Rh/Co/Pt and Pd/Co/Pt
- Universality of annihilation barriers of large magnetic skyrmions in chiral and frustrated magnets
- First-principles prediction of sub-10 nm skyrmions in Pd/Fe bilayers on Rh(111)
- Skyrmions in antiferromagnets: thermal stability and the effect of external field and impurities
- Atomistic perspective of long lifetimes of small skyrmions at room temperature
Cited by in corpus (8)
- Strain-Driven Zero-Field Near-10 nm Skyrmions in Two-Dimensional van der Waals Heterostructures
- Prediction of stable nanoscale skyrmions in monolayer FeGeTe
- Lifetime of skyrmions in discrete systems with infinitesimal lattice constant
- Thermal generation of droplet soliton in chiral magnet
- Effects of interlayer exchange on collapse mechanisms and stability of magnetic skyrmions
- Theory of magnetic field-stabilized compact skyrmions in thin film ferromagnets
- High-resolution tunneling spin transport characteristics of topologically distinct magnetic skyrmionic textures from theoretical calculations
- First-principles-based search for emergent topological spin textures in transition-metal dichalcogenide monolayers