Antiferromagnetic half-skyrmions electrically generated and controlled at room temperature

Authors

O. J. Amin, S. F. Poole, S. Reimers, L. X. Barton, A. Dal Din, F. Maccherozzi, S. S. Dhesi, V. Novák, F. Krizek, J. S. Chauhan, R. P. Campion, A. W. Rushforth, T. Jungwirth, O. A. Tretiakov, K. W. Edmonds, P. Wadley

Laboratory / Department
Department of Spintronics and Nanoelectronics
Citation
Nat. Nanotechnol. 18, 849–853 (2023)
DOI
10.1038/s41565-023-01386-3
Year
2023

Topologically protected magnetic textures are promising candidates for information carriers in future memory devices. These textures include skyrmions, half skyrmions (merons) and their antiparticles. We show that antiferromagnets contain variants of these textures that have potential for high temporal and spatial scalability of devices. In this work, we demonstrated the detection and electrical manipulation of merons and antimerons in a thin-film semimetallic CuMnAs antiferromagnet, which is a test system for spintronic applications.

Simulated XMLD–PEEM image
c,d, Simulated XMLD–PEEM image and Néel vector heatmaps for an AFDW showing chirality reversal. The colour bar represents the magnitude of the Néel vector along each component (Lx,y,z). e,f, Characteristic Bloch-type meron (e) and antimeron (f) with out-of-plane core spin component, located at positions highlighted by red and white filled circles in c. | photo: CC BY 4.0

Contact person: Tomáš Jungwirth