Chiral Spin Textures in Amorphous Iron–Germanium Thick Films

Authors

Robert Streubel, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
D. Simca Bouma, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Frank Bruni, University of California, Berkeley
Xiaoqian Chen, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Peter Ercius, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Jim Ciston, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Alpha T. N'Diaye, Advanced Light Source, Berkeley
Sujoy Roy, Advanced Light Source, Berkeley
Steve D. Kevan, Advanced Light Source, Berkeley
Peter Fischer, Lawrence Berkeley National LaboratoryFollow
Frances Hellman, University of California, Berkeley

Date of this Version

2-1-2021

Document Type

Article

Citation

Published in Advanced Materials 2021, 33, 2004830

DOI: 10.1002/adma.202004830

Comments

Copyright © 2021 Wiley-VCH GmbH. Used by permission.

Abstract

Topological solitary fields, such as magnetic and polar skyrmions, are envisioned to revolutionize microelectronics. These configurations have been stabilized in solid-state materials with a global inversion symmetry breaking, which translates in magnetic materials into a vector spin exchange known as the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction (DMI), as well as spin chirality selection and isotropic solitons. This work reports experimental evidence of 3D chiral spin textures, such as helical spins and skyrmions with different chirality and topological charge, stabilized in amorphous Fe–Ge thick films. These results demonstrate that structurally and chemically disordered materials with a random DMI can resemble inversion symmetry broken systems with similar magnetic properties, moments, and states. Disordered systems are distinguished from systems with global inversion symmetry breaking by their degenerate spin chirality that allows for forming isotropic and anisotropic topological spin textures at remanence, while offering greater flexibility in materials synthesis, voltage, and strain manipulation.