Creation of nano-skyrmion lattice in Fe/Ir(111) system using voltage pulse

Abstract

Magnetic ultrathin films grown on heavy metal substrates often exhibit rich spin structures due to the competition between various magnetic interactions such as Heisenberg exchange, Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and higher-order spin interactions. Here we employ spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy to study magnetic nano-skyrmion phase in Fe monolayer grown on Ir(111) substrate. Our observations show that the formation of nano-skyrmion lattice in the Fe/Ir(111) system depends sensitively on the growth conditions and various non-skyrmion spin states can be formed. Remarkably, the application of voltage pulses between the tip and the sample can trigger a non-skyrmion to skyrmion phase transition. The fact that nano-skyrmions can be created using voltage pulse indicates that the balance between the competing magnetic interactions can be affected by an external electric field, which is highly useful to design skyrmion-based spintronic devices with low energy consumption.

References in corpus (11)

• Observation of room temperature magnetic skyrmions and their current-driven dynamics in ultrathin Co films
• Direct Observation of the Skyrmion Hall Effect
• Electric field driven switching of individual magnetic skyrmions
• Electric-field-driven Non-volatile Multi-state Switching of Individual Skyrmions in a Multiferroic Heterostructure
• Large voltage tuning of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction: a route towards dynamic control of skyrmion chirality
• The skyrmion switch: turning magnetic skyrmion bubbles on and off with an electric field
• In situ Electric Field Skyrmion Creation in Magnetoelectric Cu${}_2$OSeO${}_3$
• Mechanisms of skyrmion collapse revealed by sub-nm maps of the transition rate
• Probing the Nanoskyrmion Lattice on Fe/Ir(111) with Magnetic Exchange Force Microscopy
• Skyrmions at the edge: Confinement effects in Fe/Ir(111)
• The influence of adatom diffusion on the formation of skyrmion lattice in sub-monolayer Fe on Ir(111)