Interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction of Antiferromagnetic Materials

TL;DR

This paper investigates the interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (iDMI) in antiferromagnetic materials, calculating its values for MnPt and NiO interfaces with heavy metals, revealing comparable and lower iDMI strengths respectively.

Contribution

It provides the first calculated values of iDMI for AFM materials MnPt and NiO interfaced with heavy metals, expanding understanding beyond ferromagnetic systems.

Findings

MnPt exhibits iDMI values comparable to ferromagnetic materials.

NiO shows lower iDMI values than MnPt.

iDMI depends on the thicknesses of AFM and HM layers.

Abstract

The interface between a ferromagnet (FM) or antiferromagnet (AFM) and a heavy metal (HM) results in an antisymmetric exchange interaction known as the interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (iDMI) which favors non-collinear spin configurations. The iDMI is responsible for stabilizing noncollinear spin textures such as skyrmions in materials with bulk inversion symmetry. Interfacial DMI values have been previously determined theoretically and experimentally for FM/HM interfaces, and, in this work, values are calculated for the metallic AFM MnPt and the insulating AFM NiO. The heavy metals considered are W, Re, and Au. The effects of the AFM and HM thicknesses are determined. The iDMI values of the MnPt heterolayers are comparable to those of the common FM materials, and those of NiO are lower.