Tuning of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction by He${}^{+}$ ion irradiation

Abstract

We studied the impact of He${}^{+}$ irradiation on the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) in Ta/Co20Fe60B20/Pt/MgO samples. We found that irradiation with of 40 keV He${}^{+}$ ions increases DMI by approximately 20% for fluences up to 2$\cdot$10${}^{16}$ ${ions/cm}^2$ before it decreases for higher fluence values. In contrast, the interfacial anisotropy shows a distinctly different fluence dependence. To better understand the impact of the ion irradiation on the Ta and Pt interfaces with the Co20Fe60B20 layer, we carried out Monte-Carlo simulations, which showed an expected increase of disorder at the interfaces. A moderate increase in disorder can increase the total number of triplets for the three-site exchange mechanism and can consequently increase the DMI. Our results demonstrate that the DMI can be locally engineered at the nanometer scale, providing a highly promising approach to advance skyrmion-based memories.

Updated the Monte Carlo simulations

References in corpus (4)

• Advances in the Physics of Magnetic Skyrmions and Perspective for Technology
• Direct observation of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in a Pt/Co/Ni film
• Twisted magnetic patterns: Exploring the Dzyaloshinskii--Moriya vector
• Effect of interfacial intermixing on the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in Pt/Co/Pt

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Ultrasensitive Sub-monolayer Palladium Induced Chirality Switching and Topological Evolution of Skyrmions
• Control of magnetoelastic coupling in Ni/Fe multilayers using He${}^{+}$ ion irradiation