Defect-implantation for the all-electrical detection of non-collinear spin-textures

The viability of past, current, and future devices for information technology hinge on their sensitivity to the presence of impurities. The latter can reshape extrinsic Hall effects or the efficiency of magnetoresistance effects, essential for spintronics, and lead to resistivity anomalies, the so-called Kondo effect. We demonstrate that atomic defects enable highly efficient all-electrical detection of spin-swirling textures [1], in particular magnetic skyrmions, which are promising bit candidates in future spintronics devices. The concomitant impurity-driven alteration of the electronic structure and magnetic non-collinearity gives rise to a new spin-mixing magnetoresistance (XMR_defect). Taking advantage of the impurities-induced amplification of the bare transport signal, which depends on their chemical nature, a defect-enhanced XMR (DXMR) is proposed. Both XMR modes are systematized for 3d and 4d transition metal defects implanted at the vicinity of skyrmions in Pd/Fe/Ir(111). The ineluctability of impurities in devices promotes the implementation of defect-enabled XMR modes in reading architectures with immediate implications in magnetic storage technologies.
[1] Lima Fernandes I. et al., Nat. Commun. 11, 1602 (2020)