Discovery of Magnetic Antiskyrmions Beyond Room Temperature in Tetragonal Heusler Materials

TL;DR

This paper reports the experimental discovery of antiskyrmions in tetragonal Heusler materials, stable at room temperature and above, with potential implications for spintronic device development.

Contribution

It presents the first observation of antiskyrmions in tetragonal Heusler compounds with D2d symmetry, expanding the understanding of skyrmion types beyond previously known systems.

Findings

Antiskyrmions observed between 100 K and 400 K.

Field-stabilized antiskyrmion lattices and isolated structures.

Zero-field metastable antiskyrmions at low temperatures.

Abstract

Skyrmions, topologically stable spin textures, are of great interest for new generations of spintronic devices. In general, the stabilization of skyrmions has been achieved in systems with broken inversion symmetry, where the asymmetric Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) modifies the uniform magnetic state to a swirling state. Depending on the crystal symmetries, two distinct types of skyrmions, Bloch and N\'eel types, have been observed experimentally. Here, we present, the experimental manifestation of a special type of spin-swirling, namely antiskyrmions, in a family of acentric tetragonal Heusler compounds with D2d crystal symmetry. A spiral magnetic ground-state, which propagates in the tetragonal basal plane, is transformed into a skyrmion lattice-state under magnetic fields applied along the tetragonal axis over a wide temperature interval. Direct imaging by Lorentz Transmission Electron Microscopy (LTEM) shows field stabilized antiskyrmion lattices and isolated antiskyrmions between 100 K and 400 K, and zero-field metastable antiskyrmions at low temperatures.