Rare Earth-Transition Metal Alloys as Promising Materials for Small Skyrmions and Ultrafast Chiral Spin Texture Dynamics

ORAL

Abstract

Spintronics aims to understand and control spins on the nanoscale and should enable next-generation data storage and logic devices. One technological and scientific key challenge is to stabilize small spin textures and to manipulate them efficiently with high speeds [1-3]. Inspired by hard disk materials, research has primarily focused on ferromagnetic materials, but these materials show fundamental limits for speed and size [4-6], calling for radically different ideas [4-7].
Here, we demonstrate that compensated ferrimagnets are not affected by these limits. We realize a current-driven domain wall velocity of over 1 km/s near the angular momentum compensation temperature (TA) and room-temperature stable skyrmions with minimum observed diameters approaching ~10 nm near magnetic compensation (TM). We present theory explaining these observations and demonstrate that high-speed, high-density spintronics devices based on current-driven spin textures can be realized using materials where TA and TM are close together.

[1] Parkin, S & Yang, S-H Nat Nano 10 (2015)
[2] Fert, A et al. Nat Nano 8 (2013)
[3] Emori, S et al. Nat Mat 12 (2013)
[4] Yang, S-H et al. Nat Nano 10 (2015)
[5] Kim, K-J et al. Nat Mat 16 (2017)
[6] Büttner, F et al. Sci Rep 8 (2018)
[7] Jungwirth, T et al. Nat Nano 11 (2016)

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Presenters

  • Lucas Caretta

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Authors

  • Lucas Caretta

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Maxwell Mann

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Felix Buettner

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Brookhaven National Laboratory

  • Kohei Ueda

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Can Avci

    • ETH Zurich
    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Ethan Raphael Rosenberg

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Jackson Bauer

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    • Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Bastian Pfau

    • Max-Born-Institut
    • Max Born Institut

  • Christian Günther

    • Max-Born-Institut
    • TU Berlin

  • Piet Hessing

    • Max-Born-Institut
    • Max Born Institut

  • Alexandra Churikova

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Christopher Klose

    • Max-Born-Institut
    • Max Born Institut

  • Michael Schneider

    • Max-Born-Institut
    • Max Born Institut

  • Dieter Engel

    • Max-Born-Institut
    • Max Born Institut

  • Colin Marcus

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • David Bono

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Kai Bagschik

    • DESY

  • Stefan Eisebitt

    • Max-Born-Institut
    • Max Born Institut

  • Geoffrey S Beach

    • Massachusetts Institute of Technology