All-Electrical Skyrmionic Bits in a Chiral Magnetic Tunnel Junction

Abstract

Topological spin textures such as magnetic skyrmions hold considerable promise as robust, nanometre-scale, mobile bits for sustainable computing. A longstanding roadblock to unleashing their potential is the absence of a device enabling deterministic electrical readout of individual spin textures. Here we present the wafer-scale realization of a nanoscale chiral magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) hosting a single, ambient skyrmion. Using a suite of electrical and multi-modal imaging techniques, we show that the MTJ nucleates skyrmions of fixed polarity, whose large readout signal - 20-70% relative to uniform states - corresponds directly to skyrmion size. Further, the MTJ exploits complementary mechanisms to stabilize distinctly sized skyrmions at zero field, thereby realizing three nonvolatile electrical states. Crucially, it can write and delete skyrmions using current densities 1,000 times lower than state-of-the-art. These results provide a platform to incorporate readout and manipulation of skyrmionic bits across myriad device architectures, and a springboard to harness chiral spin textures for multi-bit memory and unconventional computing.

8 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (8)

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• Skyrmion-mediated Nonvolatile Ternary Memory
• Fractional Skyrmion Tubes in Chiral-Interfaced Three-Dimensional Magnetic Nanowires
• Programmable skyrmions for robust communication and intelligent sensing
• Creating and Deleting a Single Dipolar Skyrmion by Surface Spin Twists
• Skyrmion Sliding Switch in a 90-nm-Wide Nanostructured Chiral Magnet
• Skyrmion Crystal in a Microwave Field
• Zero Field Antiferromagnetically Coupled Skyrmions and their Field-Driven Uncoupling in Composite Chiral Multilayers
• Proximal quantum control of spin and spin ensemble with highly localized control field from skyrmions
• Real-time dynamics of VCMA-assisted switching of magnetic tunnel junctions
• Hydrogen toggling between Yoshimori spin spirals and elliptical Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya skyrmions in Fe on Ir(110)
• Correlating on-the-fly Electrical and Optical Skyrmion Readout
• Voltage-controlled topological spin textures in the monolayer limit
• Enhanced Curie temperature and room-temperature 50-nm skyrmions achieved in hexagonal ferromagnet Mn5Ge3+x synthesized via a high-pressure method