Ultrasensitive Sub-monolayer Palladium Induced Chirality Switching and Topological Evolution of Skyrmions
arXiv:2206.12069 · doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c02043
Abstract
Chiral spin textures are fundamentally interesting, with promise for device applications. Stabilizing chirality is conventionally achieved by introducing Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) in asymmetric multilayers where the thickness of each layer is at least a few monolayers. Here we report an ultrasensitive chirality switching in (Ni/Co)n multilayer induced by capping with only 0.22 monolayer of Pd. Using spin-polarized low-energy electron microscopy, we monitor the gradual evolution of domain walls from left-handed to right-handed Neel walls and quantify the DMI induced by the Pd capping layer. We also observe the chiral evolution of a skyrmion during the DMI switching, where no significant topological protection is found as the skyrmion winding number varies. This corresponds to a minimum energy cost of < 1 attojoule during the skyrmion chirality switching. Our results demonstrate the detailed chirality evolution within skyrmions during the DMI sign switching, which is relevant to practical applications of skyrmionic devices.
16 pages, 3 figures
References in corpus (6)
- Spontaneous Skyrmion Ground States in Magnetic Metals
- Skyrmion Hall Effect Revealed by Direct Time-Resolved X-Ray Microscopy
- Magnetic skyrmion logic gates: conversion, duplication and merging of skyrmions
- Skyrmions in Magnetic Multilayers
- 3D Nanomagnetism in Low Density Interconnected Nanowire Networks
- Observation of hydrogen-induced Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and reversible switching of magnetic chirality