Electrical detection of single magnetic skyrmions in metallic multilayers at room temperature

Nat Nanotechnol. 2018 Mar;13(3):233-237. doi: 10.1038/s41565-017-0044-4. Epub 2018 Jan 29.

Abstract

Magnetic skyrmions are topologically protected whirling spin textures that can be stabilized in magnetic materials by an asymmetric exchange interaction between neighbouring spins that imposes a fixed chirality. Their small size, together with the robustness against external perturbations, make magnetic skyrmions potential storage bits in a novel generation of memory and logic devices. To this aim, their contribution to the electrical transport properties of a device must be characterized-however, the existing demonstrations are limited to low temperatures and mainly in magnetic materials with a B20 crystal structure. Here we combine concomitant magnetic force microscopy and Hall resistivity measurements to demonstrate the electrical detection of sub-100 nm skyrmions in a multilayered thin film at room temperature. Furthermore, we detect and analyse the Hall signal of a single skyrmion, which indicates that it arises from the anomalous Hall effect with a negligible contribution from the topological Hall effect.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't