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Condensed Matter > Materials Science
Title: Inducing a Tunable Skyrmion-Antiskyrmion System through Ion Beam Modification of FeGe Films
(Submitted on 22 Nov 2023 (v1), last revised 14 Apr 2024 (this version, v2))
Abstract: Skyrmions and antiskyrmions are nanoscale swirling textures of magnetic moments formed by chiral interactions between atomic spins in magnetic non-centrosymmetric materials and multilayer films with broken inversion symmetry. These quasiparticles are of interest for use as information carriers in next-generation, low-energy spintronic applications. To develop skyrmion-based memory and logic, we must understand skyrmion-defect interactions with two main goals -- determining how skyrmions navigate intrinsic material defects and determining how to engineer disorder for optimal device operation. Here, we introduce a tunable means of creating a skyrmion-antiskyrmion system by engineering the disorder landscape in FeGe using ion irradiation. Specifically, we irradiate epitaxial B20-phase FeGe films with 2.8 MeV Au$^{4+}$ ions at varying fluences, inducing amorphous regions within the crystalline matrix. Using low-temperature electrical transport and magnetization measurements, we observe a strong topological Hall effect with a double-peak feature that serves as a signature of skyrmions and antiskyrmions. These results are a step towards the development of information storage devices that use skyrmions and anitskyrmions as storage bits and our system may serve as a testbed for theoretically predicted phenomena in skyrmion-antiskyrmion crystals.
Submission history
From: Serena Eley [view email][v1] Wed, 22 Nov 2023 03:34:18 GMT (6940kb,D)
[v2] Sun, 14 Apr 2024 22:00:23 GMT (6940kb,D)
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