Visualizing Chiral Ferrimagnetism in Amorphous GdCo Films

ORAL

Abstract

Inversion symmetry breaking has become a thriving research in modern magnetism with phenomena including Rashba effect, spin Hall effect and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI). The latter one may stabilize chiral spin textures with topologically non-trivial properties, such as Skyrmions. So far, chiral spin textures have mainly been studied in helimagnets and thin ferromagnets with heavy-element capping.

Here, we show, on the example of chiral ferrimagnetism in amorphous GdCo, that the concept of chirality driven by interfacial DMI can be generalized to complex multicomponent systems. Utilizing Lorentz microscopy and X-ray magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy, and tailoring thickness, capping and rare-earth composition, we find that a 2nm-thick GdCo film preserves ferrimagnetism and stabilizes chiral domain walls. The type of chiral domain walls depends on the rare-earth composition/saturation magnetization, enabling a possible temperature control of the intrinsic properties of ferrimagnetic domain walls.

Reference: R. Streubel et al., Adv. Mater. 30, 1800199 (2018).

*Supported by DOE BES MSED under contract #DE-AC02-05-CH11231.

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Presenters

  • Robert Streubel

    • MSD, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    • Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Authors

  • Robert Streubel

    • MSD, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    • Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Charles-Henri Lambert

    • ETH Zurich
    • UC Berkeley

  • Noah Kent

    • Lawrence Berkeley National Lab
    • UC Santa Cruz/ LBNL
    • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    • Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Cruz

  • Peter Ercius

    • Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Alpha N'Diaye

    • Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    • Advanced Light Source
    • Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA

  • Colin Ophus

    • Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Sayeef Salahuddin

    • University of California, Berkeley
    • UC Berkeley
    • Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, UC Berkeley

  • Peter Fischer

    • UC Santa Cruz/ LBNL
    • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
    • Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Cruz