Switching between Magnetic Bloch and Néel Domain Walls with Anisotropy Modulations

Abstract

It has been shown previously that the presence of a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in perpendicularly magnetized thin films stabilizes Néel type domain walls. We demonstrate, using micromagnetic simulations and analytical modeling, that the presence of a uniaxial in-plane magnetic anisotropy can also lead to the formation of Néel walls in the absence of a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. It is possible to abruptly switch between Bloch and Néel walls via a small modulation of both the in-plane, but also the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. This opens up a route towards electric field control of the domain wall type with small applied voltages through electric field controlled anisotropies.