Investigation of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and room temperature skyrmions in W/CoFeB/MgO thin films and microwires

Jaiswal S, Litzius K, Lemesh I, Buttner F, Finizio S, Raabe J, Weigand M, Lee K, Langer J, Ocker B, Jakob G, Beach GSD, Klaeui M (2017)

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2017

Journal

Applied Physics Letters American Institute of Physics (AIP)

Book Volume: 111

Article Number: 022409

Journal Issue: 2

DOI: 10.1063/1.4991360

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that material structures, which lack structural inversion symmetry and have high spin-orbit coupling can exhibit chiral magnetic textures and skyrmions which could be a key component for next generation storage devices. The Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction (DMI) that stabilizes skyrmions is an anti-symmetric exchange interaction favoring non-collinear orientation of neighboring spins. It has been shown that materials systems with high DMI can lead to very efficient domain wall and skyrmion motion by spin-orbit torques. To engineer such devices, it is important to quantify the DMI for a given material system. Here, we extract the DMI at the Heavy Metal/Ferromagnet interface using two complementary measurement schemes, namely, asymmetric domain wall motion and the magnetic stripe annihilation. By using the two different measurement schemes, we find for W(5 nm)/Co20Fe60B20(0.6 nm)/MgO(2 nm) the DMI to be 0.68 ± 0.05 mJ/m2 and 0.73 ± 0.5 mJ/m2, respectively. Furthermore, we show that this DMI stabilizes skyrmions at room temperature and that there is a strong dependence of the DMI on the relative composition of the CoFeB alloy. Finally, we optimize the layers and the interfaces using different growth conditions and demonstrate that a higher deposition rate leads to a more uniform film with reduced pinning and skyrmions that can be manipulated by spin orbit torques.

Involved external institutions

Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz (JGU) DE Germany (DE) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) US United States (USA) (US) Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) CH Switzerland (CH) Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) / Max-Planck-Institut für Intelligente Systeme DE Germany (DE) Singulus Technologies AG DE Germany (DE)

How to cite

APA:

Jaiswal, S., Litzius, K., Lemesh, I., Buttner, F., Finizio, S., Raabe, J.,... Klaeui, M. (2017). Investigation of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and room temperature skyrmions in W/CoFeB/MgO thin films and microwires. Applied Physics Letters, 111(2). https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4991360

MLA:

Jaiswal, Samridh, et al. "Investigation of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and room temperature skyrmions in W/CoFeB/MgO thin films and microwires." Applied Physics Letters 111.2 (2017).

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