Room temperature zero field skyrmions in Fe-based thin film stacks

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the creation of stable magnetic skyrmions at room temperature and zero magnetic field in Fe-based thin film stacks, highlighting their potential for high-density data storage.

Contribution

It reports the first observation of room temperature, zero field skyrmions in Fe-based thin films with interfacial Dzyaloshinskii Moriya interactions confirmed by simulations and DFT calculations.

Findings

Skyrmions are stable at room temperature and zero field.

Skyrmion width is approximately 110 nm.

Interfacial DMI values are between 3.1 and 3.6, corroborated by DFT.

Abstract

A new paradigm is required to facilitate the demand for the huge data storage capacity and faster data processing in the future. Nano structures such as magnetic skyrmions have been predicted to address this issues as these vortex structures are the smallest particle-like magnetic features and are topologically protected from crystallographic defects or magnetic disorder. We report here stable skyrmions at room temperature and with zero applied field in ebeam evaporated Ir Fe Ir MgO thin film stacks. Micromagnetic simulations show that these skyrmions are induced by interfacial Dzyaloshinskii Moriya interactions between the ferromagnetic and heavy metal ultra thin layers values in the range between 3.1 to 3.6. We also show the field dependencies of the skyrmion width and density. The room temperature zero field width is 110 nm, approximately comparable to the value showed by Fert et al and Boulle et al for the multi stacks thin film. DFT calculations corroborate our experimental results by predicting a DMI value of 3.67.