Measuring and tailoring the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in perpendicularly magnetized thin films

By A. Hrabec, N. Porter, A. Wells, M. J. Benitez, G. Burnell, S. McVitie, D. McGrouther, T. Moore, C. Marrows. 2014

344 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions (DMIs) in perpendicularly magnetized thin films of Pt/Co/Pt and Pt/Co/Ir/Pt. To study the effective DMI, arising at either side of the ferromagnet, we use a field-driven domain wall creep-based method. The use of only magnetic field removes the possibility of mixing with current-related effects such as spin Hall effect or Rashba field, as well as the complexity arising from lithographic patterning. Inserting an ultrathin layer of Ir at the top Co/Pt interface allows us to access the DMI contribution from the top Co/Pt interface. We show that the insertion of a thin Ir layer leads to reversal of the sign of the effective DMI acting on the sandwiched Co layer, and therefore continuously changes the domain wall structure from the right- to the left-handed Neel wall. The use of two DMI-active layers offers an efficient way of DMI tuning and enhancement in thin magnetic films. The comparison with an epitaxial Pt/Co/Pt multilayer sheds more light on the origin of DMI in polycrystalline Pt/Co/Pt films and demonstrates an exquisite sensitivity to the exact details of the atomic structure at the film interfaces.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Condensed Matter Physics, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a0400de716bae3637566fa62bff8443d130b3e31

How researchers see this paper

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. Wanjun Jiang
2. S. Velthuis
3. J. Zang
4. Gong Chen
5. Kai Liu
6. Axel Hoffmann

In Condensed Matter Physics

1. Gong Chen
2. Kai Liu
3. Axel Hoffmann
4. Wanjun Jiang
5. J. Zang
6. S. Velthuis

In Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials

1. Gong Chen
2. Axel Hoffmann
3. Wanjun Jiang
4. J. Zang
5. S. Velthuis

Citations in the corpus

• Skyrmions in magnetic multilayers (2017, methodology): “19A. Due to the competition between long-range dipolar and short-range exchange interaction, a system with weak PMA typically undergoes a spin reorientation transition with in-plane magnetic fields that is manifested by a band-to-bubble domain phase transition.”
• Perpendicular magnetic anisotropy at transition metal/oxide interfaces and applications (2017, unknown): “Their nonideal symmetry was revealed, for instance, by DMI measurements performed on these structures (Je et al., 2013; Hrabec et al., 2014) since otherwise theDMIcontributions from two interfaces would cancel out (Yang et al., 2015).”
• Observation of room-temperature magnetic skyrmions and their current-driven dynamics in ultrathin metallic ferromagnets. (2015, unknown): “= = z z r z z r z z m m m m m t D m m m m t D m m m m Dt                            (11)”