Fallon, K, Hughes, S, Zeissler, K et al. (11 more authors) (2020) Controlled Individual Skyrmion Nucleation at Artificial Defects Formed by Ion Irradiation. Small, 16 (3). 1907450. ISSN 1613-6810
Abstract
Magnetic skyrmions are particle‐like deformations in a magnetic texture. They have great potential as information carriers in spintronic devices because of their interesting topological properties and favorable motion under spin currents. A new method of nucleating skyrmions at nanoscale defect sites, created in a controlled manner with focused ion beam irradiation, in polycrystalline magnetic multilayer samples with an interfacial Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction, is reported. This new method has three notable advantages: 1) localization of nucleation; 2) stability over a larger range of external field strengths, including stability at zero field; and 3) existence of skyrmions in material systems where, prior to defect fabrication, skyrmions were not previously obtained by field cycling. Additionally, it is observed that the size of defect nucleated skyrmions is uninfluenced by the defect itself—provided that the artificial defects are controlled to be smaller than the inherent skyrmion size. All of these characteristics are expected to be useful toward the goal of realizing a skyrmion‐based spintronic device. This phenomenon is studied with a range of transmission electron microscopy techniques to probe quantitatively the magnetic behavior at the defects with applied field and correlate this with the structural impact of the defects.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 The Authors. Published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | ion irradiation; magnetic multilayers; magnetic skyrmions; skyrmion nucleation |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Physics and Astronomy (Leeds) > Condensed Matter (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number EU - European Union 665095 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 11 Mar 2020 10:51 |
Last Modified: | 19 Jul 2022 09:32 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/smll.201907450 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:158156 |