Engineering of Intrinsic Chiral Torques in Magnetic Thin Films Based on the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction

Abstract

The establishment of chiral coupling in thin magnetic films with inhomogeneous anisotropy has led to the development of artificial systems of fundamental and technological interest. The chiral coupling itself is enabled by the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) enforced by the patterned noncollinear magnetization. Here, we create a domain wall track with out-of-plane magnetization coupled on each side to a narrow parallel strip with in-plane magnetization. With this we show that the chiral torques emerging from the DMI at the boundary between the regions of noncollinear magnetization in a single magnetic layer can be used to bias the domain wall velocity. To tune the chiral torques, the design of the magnetic racetracks can be modified by varying the width of the tracks or the width of the transition region between noncollinear magnetizations, reaching effective chiral magnetic fields of up to 7.8 mT. Furthermore, we show how the magnitude of the chiral torques can be estimated by measuring asymmetric domain wall velocities, and demonstrate spontaneous domain wall motion propelled by intrinsic torques even in the absence of any external driving force.

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• Engineering of Intrinsic Chiral Torques in Magnetic Thin Films Based on the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Spin-orbit torque switching of magnetic tunnel junctions for memory application
• Strong lateral exchange coupling and current-induced switching in single-layer ferrimagnetic films with patterned compensation temperature
• Engineering of Intrinsic Chiral Torques in Magnetic Thin Films Based on the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction
• Intrinsic chiral field as vector potential of the magnetic current in the zig-zag lattice of magnetic dipoles
• Control of spin-orbit torque-driven domain nucleation through geometry in chirally coupled magnetic tracks