Néel-type skyrmion in WTe2/Fe3GeTe2 van der Waals heterostructure

Yingying Wu; Senfu Zhang; Junwei Zhang; Wei Wang; Yang Lin Zhu; Jin Hu; Gen Yin; Kin Wong; Chi Fang; Caihua Wan; Xiufeng Han; Qiming Shao; Takashi Taniguchi; Kenji Watanabe; Jiadong Zang; Zhiqiang Mao; Xixiang Zhang; Kang L Wang

doi:10.1038/s41467-020-17566-x

Néel-type skyrmion in WTe₂/Fe₃GeTe₂ van der Waals heterostructure

Nat Commun. 2020 Jul 31;11(1):3860. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-17566-x.

Authors

Yingying Wu^#¹, Senfu Zhang^#², Junwei Zhang², Wei Wang³, Yang Lin Zhu⁴, Jin Hu⁵, Gen Yin¹, Kin Wong¹, Chi Fang⁶, Caihua Wan⁶, Xiufeng Han⁶, Qiming Shao¹, Takashi Taniguchi⁷, Kenji Watanabe⁷, Jiadong Zang⁸, Zhiqiang Mao⁴, Xixiang Zhang², Kang L Wang⁹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA.
² Physical Science and Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia.
³ Key Laboratory of Flexible Electronics & Institute of Advanced Materials, Jiangsu National Synergetic Innovation Center for Advanced Materials, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, 211816, China.
⁴ Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA.
⁵ Department of Physics, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, 72701, USA.
⁶ Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China.
⁷ National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba, 305-0044, Japan.
⁸ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, 03824, USA.
⁹ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA. wang@ee.ucla.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

The promise of high-density and low-energy-consumption devices motivates the search for layered structures that stabilize chiral spin textures such as topologically protected skyrmions. At the same time, recently discovered long-range intrinsic magnetic orders in the two-dimensional van der Waals materials provide a new platform for the discovery of novel physics and effects. Here we demonstrate the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and Néel-type skyrmions are induced at the WTe₂/Fe₃GeTe₂ interface. Transport measurements show the topological Hall effect in this heterostructure for temperatures below 100 K. Furthermore, Lorentz transmission electron microscopy is used to directly image Néel-type skyrmion lattice and the stripe-like magnetic domain structures as well. The interfacial coupling induced Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction is estimated to have a large energy of 1.0 mJ m^-2. This work paves a path towards the skyrmionic devices based on van der Waals layered heterostructures.