Room-temperature antiskyrmions and sawtooth surface textures in a noncentrosymmetric magnet with $S_4$ symmetry

Abstract

Topological spin textures have attracted much attention both for fundamental physics and spintronics applications. Among them, antiskyrmions possess a unique spin configuration with Bloch-type and Néel-type domain walls due to anisotropic Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) in the noncentrosymmetric crystal structure. However, antiskyrmions have thus far only been observed in a few Heusler compounds with $D_{2\mathrm{d}}$ symmetry. Here, we report a new material Fe${}_{1.9}$Ni${}_{0.9}$Pd${}_{0.2}$P in a different symmetry class ($S_4$ symmetry), where antiskyrmions exist over a wide temperature region including room temperature, and transform to skyrmions upon changing magnetic field and lamella thickness. The periodicity of magnetic textures greatly depends on crystal thickness, and domains with anisotropic sawtooth fractals are observed at the surface of thick crystals, which are attributed to the interplay between dipolar interaction and DMI as governed by crystal symmetry. Our findings provide a new arena to study antiskyrmions, and should stimulate further research on topological spin textures and their applications.

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Nature Materials (2021). The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-020-00898-w

References in corpus (4)

• A new class of chiral materials hosting magnetic skyrmions beyond room temperature
• Néel-type skyrmion lattice in tetragonal polar magnet VOSe${}_2$O${}_5$
• Probing fractal magnetic domains on multiple length scales in Nd2Fe14B
• Direct observation of domain wall structures in curved permalloy wires containing an anti-notch

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Anisotropic Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and topological magnetism in two-dimensional magnets protected by P4-m2 crystal symmetry
• Doping control of magnetic anisotropy for stable antiskyrmion formation in schreibersite (Fe,Ni)${}_3$P with $S_4$ symmetry
• Current-Controlled Topological Magnetic Transformations in a Nanostructured Kagome Magnet
• Unveiling the anisotropic fractal magnetic domain structure in bulk crystal of antiskyrmion-host (Fe,Ni,Pd)${}_3$P by small-angle neutron scattering