Out-of-plane chiral domain wall spin-structures in ultrathin in-plane magnets

Gong Chen, Sang Pyo Kang, Colin Ophus, Alpha T. N'Diaye, Hee Young Kwon, Ryan T. Qiu, Changyeon Won, Kai Liu, Yizheng Wu, Andreas K. Schmid

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

42 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Chiral spin textures in ultrathin films, such as skyrmions or chiral domain walls, are believed to offer large performance advantages in the development of novel spintronics technologies. While in-plane magnetized films have been studied extensively as media for current- and field-driven domain wall dynamics with applications in memory or logic devices, the stabilization of chiral spin textures in in-plane magnetized films has remained rare. Here we report a phase of spin structures in an in-plane magnetized ultrathin film system where out-of-plane spin orientations within domain walls are stable. Moreover, while domain walls in in-plane films are generally expected to be non-chiral, we show that right-handed spin rotations are strongly favoured in this system, due to the presence of the interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. These results constitute a platform to explore unconventional spin dynamics and topological phenomena that may enable high-performance in-plane spin-orbitronics devices.

Original languageEnglish
Article number15302
JournalNature Communications
Volume8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 19 May 2017

Bibliographical note

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© The Author(s) 2017.

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