The skyrmion switch: turning magnetic skyrmion bubbles on and off with an electric field

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method to control the creation and annihilation of magnetic skyrmion bubbles using electric fields, offering a potentially energy-efficient approach for spintronics memory and logic devices.

Contribution

It introduces electric field gating as a practical and integrable technique to manipulate skyrmion bubbles, supported by a detailed stability diagram and an analytical model.

Findings

Electric fields can reversibly control skyrmion bubble stability.

Both magnetic dipolar and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions are crucial for stabilization.

A stability diagram maps skyrmion behavior under electric field variations.

Abstract

Nanoscale magnetic skyrmions are considered as potential information carriers for future spintronics memory and logic devices. Such applications will require the control of their local creation and annihilation, which involves so far solutions that are either energy consuming or difficult to integrate. Here we demonstrate the control of skyrmion bubbles nucleation and annihilation using electric field gating, an easily integrable and potentially energetically efficient solution. We present a detailed stability diagram of the skyrmion bubbles in a Pt/Co/oxide trilayer and show that their stability can be controlled via an applied electric field. An analytical bubble model, with the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction imbedded in the domain wall energy, account for the observed electrical skyrmion switching effect. This allows us to unveil the origin of the electrical control of skyrmions stability and to show that both magnetic dipolar interaction and the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction play an important role in the skyrmion bubble stabilization.