Skyrmion automotion in confined counter-sensor device geometries

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel skyrmion-based sensor-counter device that encodes rotation counts via skyrmion nucleation, utilizing automotion effects in confined geometries, demonstrated through simulations and theoretical modeling.

Contribution

It presents a new skyrmion-based multi-turn sensor-counter concept leveraging automotion in confined geometries, combining micromagnetic simulations and Thiele equation analysis.

Findings

Skyrmion nucleation encodes rotation count.

Automotion effect depends on device geometry.

Triangular geometry with reservoir enables effective sensing.

Abstract

Magnetic skyrmions are topologically stabilized quasi-particles and are promising candidates for energy-efficient applications, such as storage but also logic and sensing. Here we present a new concept for a multi-turn sensor-counter device based on skyrmions, where the number of sensed rotations is encoded in the number of nucleated skyrmions. The skyrmion-boundary force in the confined geometry of the device in combination with the topology-dependent dynamics leads to the effect of automotion for certain geometries. For our case, we describe and investigate this effect with micromagnetic simulations and the coarse-grained Thiele equation in a triangular geometry with an attached reservoir as part of the sensor-counter device.