Switching between Magnetic Bloch and N\'eel Domain Walls with Anisotropy Modulations

TL;DR

This paper shows that uniaxial in-plane magnetic anisotropy can induce Neel domain walls without Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and enables switching between Bloch and Neel walls via small anisotropy modulations, facilitating electric field control.

Contribution

It introduces a new method to switch between Bloch and Neel domain walls using anisotropy modulations without relying on Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction.

Findings

Uniaxial in-plane anisotropy can stabilize Neel walls.

Small anisotropy modulations can switch domain wall types.

Electric field control of domain walls via anisotropy tuning is possible.

Abstract

It has been shown previously that the presence of a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in perpendicularly magnetized thin films stabilizes N\'eel type domain walls. We demonstrate, using micromagnetic simulations and analytical modeling, that the presence of a uniaxial in-plane magnetic anisotropy can also lead to the formation of N\'eel walls in the absence of a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. It is possible to abruptly switch between Bloch and N\'eel walls via a small modulation of both the in-plane, but also the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. This opens up a route towards electric field control of the domain wall type with small applied voltages through electric field controlled anisotropies.