Particle-like skyrmions interacting with a funnel obstacle

TL;DR

This study investigates how funnel-shaped obstacles with enhanced magnetic anisotropy influence the behavior and control of particle-like skyrmions in ferromagnetic layers, revealing complex interactions and potential for flow manipulation.

Contribution

It introduces the use of funnel obstacles to control skyrmion dynamics, demonstrating effects like compression, clogging, and separation, which are novel in skyrmion-substrate interaction studies.

Findings

Funnel obstacles can modify skyrmion trajectories and induce complex behaviors.

Skyrmions can be captured or guided by the funnel in static and dynamic conditions.

The funnel can separate skyrmion flows into asymmetric streams.

Abstract

The skyrmion-substrate interaction is an important issue to consider when studying particle-like skyrmions in nanostructures, which may strongly affect the skyrmion dynamics and lead to complex dynamic phenomena. Here, we report the current-driven dynamic behaviors of particle-like skyrmions interacting with the funnel obstacle in a ferromagnetic layer. We computationally demonstrate that a funnel obstacle with enhanced perpendicular magnetic anisotropy can be used to modify the dynamics of skyrmions due to the repulsive skyrmion-funnel interaction, which could generate several nontrivial effects, including the compression, clogging, annihilation, guided motion, and capturing of skyrmions. It is also found that the funnel obstacle can separate an incoming flow of skyrmions into two asymmetric flows. Moreover, we show that it is possible to capture skyrmions by the funnel obstacle in both static and dynamic ways. Our results are useful for understanding the skyrmion dynamics interacting with the substrate and could provide guidelines for the control of skyrmion flows in a transmission channel.