No Arabic abstract
Magnetic skyrmions have been the focus of intense research with promising applications in memory, logic and interconnect technology. Several schemes have been recently proposed and demonstrated to nucleate skyrmions. However, they either result in an uncontrolled skyrmion bubble production or are mostly targeted towards integration with racetrack memory device. In this work, we propose a novel scheme for a controlled single skyrmion nucleation in a confined nanowire geometry with sub-100 nm width using a generalized approach of localized spin current injection technique in material systems exhibiting low Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI). Our proposed nucleation mechanism follows a pathway involving the creation of a reversed magnetic domain containing one or more pairs of vertical Bloch lines (VBLs) that form an edge-to-edge domain wall as the VBLs get annihilated at the edge of the nanowire. However, pinning of the edge domain walls within a narrow gap using notches or anti-notches results in the creation of a magnetic bubble with defect-free domain wall that eventually relaxes into a circular skyrmion structure. Our simulations predict that the proposed mechanism allows skyrmion nucleation on sub-nanosecond timescale, shows robustness to variations like local pinning sites and is applicable for any skyrmion-based logic, memory and interconnect application.
Chirality, an intrinsic handedness, is one of the most intriguing fundamental phenomena in nature. Materials composed of chiral molecules find broad applications in areas ranging from nonlinear optics and spintronics to biology and pharmaceuticals. However, chirality is usually an invariable inherent property of a given material that cannot be easily changed at will. Here, we demonstrate that ferroelectric nanodots support skyrmions the chirality of which can be controlled and switched. We devise protocols for realizing control and efficient manipulations of the different types of skyrmions. Our findings open the route for controlled chirality with potential applications in ferroelectric-based information technologies.
The emergence of a topologically nontrivial vortex-like magnetic structure, the magnetic skyrmion, has launched new concepts for memory devices. There, extensive studies have theoretically demonstrated the ability to encode information bits by using a chain of skyrmions in one-dimensional nanostripes. Here, we report the first experimental observation of the skyrmion chain in FeGe nanostripes by using high resolution Lorentz transmission electron microscopy. Under an applied field normal to the nanostripes plane, we observe that the helical ground states with distorted edge spins would evolves into individual skyrmions, which assemble in the form of chain at low field and move collectively into the center of nanostripes at elevated field. Such skyrmion chain survives even as the width of nanostripe is much larger than the single skyrmion size. These discovery demonstrates new way of skyrmion formation through the edge effect, and might, in the long term, shed light on the applications.
In this paper, a 3-terminal spin-transfer torque nano-oscillator (STNO) is studied using the concurrent spin injection of a spin-polarized tunneling current and a spin Hall current exciting the free layer into dynamic regimes beyond what is achieved by each individual mechanism. The pure spin injection is capable of inducing oscillations in the absence of charge currents effectively reducing the critical tunneling current to zero. This reduction of the critical charge currents can improve the endurance of both STNOs and non-volatile magnetic memories (MRAM) devices. It is shown that the system response can be described in terms of an injected spin current density $J_s$ which results from the contribution of both spin injection mechanisms, with the tunneling current polarization $p$ and the spin Hall angle $theta$ acting as key parameters determining the efficiency of each injection mechanism. The experimental data exhibits an excellent agreement with this model which can be used to quantitatively predict the critical points ($J_s = -2.26pm 0.09 times 10^9 hbar/e$ A/m$^2$) and the oscillation amplitude as a function of the input currents. In addition, the fitting of the data also allows an independent confirmation of the values estimated for the spin Hall angle and tunneling current polarization as well as the extraction of the damping $alpha = 0.01$ and non-linear damping $Q = 3.8pm 0.3$ parameters.
Spin pumping is a widely recognized method to generate the spin current in the spintronics, which is acknowledged as a fundamentally dynamic process equivalent to the spin-transfer torque. In this work, we theoretically verify that the oscillating spin current can be pumped from the microwave-motivated breathing skyrmion. The skyrmion spin pumping can be excited by a relatively low frequency compared with the ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) and the current density is larger than the ordinary FMR spin pumping. Based on the skyrmion spin pumping, we build a high reading-speed racetrack memory model whose reading speed is an order of magnitude higher than the SOT (spin-orbit torque) /STT (spin-transfer torque) skyrmion racetrack. Our work explored the spin pumping phenomenon in the skyrmion, and it may contribute to the applications of the skyrmion-based device.
We study theoretically spin transport through a single-molecule magnet (SMM) in the sequential and cotunneling regimes, where the SMM is weakly coupled to one ferromagnetic and one normalmetallic leads. By a master-equation approach, it is found that the spin polarization injected from the ferromagnetic lead is amplified and highly polarized spin-current can be generated, due to the exchange coupling between the transport electron and the anisotropic spin of the SMM. Moreover, the spin-current polarization can be tuned by the gate or bias voltage, and thus an efficient spin injection device based on the SMM is proposed in molecular spintronics.