Magnetoelectric coupling and the manipulation of magnetic Bloch skyrmions

Abstract

Chiral-magnetic/ferroelectric composite systems offer the possibility of electrically inducing magnetic Bloch skyrmions [Wang and Grimson, Phys. Rev. B 94, 014311 (2016)]. They are appealing for potential applications in spintronics due to their self-protection behavior. To realize skyrmion-based spintronic devices, it is essential to control the motions of the skyrmions. In this work, we propose a mechanical technique to manipulate skyrmions collinearly with a mobile external electric field that is imposed on the chiral-magnetic/ferroelectric system. The role of propagation velocity strongly impacts on the quality of magnetic skyrmions.

Meronlike Spin Textures in In-Plane-Magnetized Thin Films

“…Skyrmions are nontrivial magnetic spin textures considered to offer better functionalities for spintronic and storage devices owing to their topological nature, which provides stability from defects and from external perturbations [8][9][10][11][12]. For example, it has been shown that skyrmions and skyrmionic structures can be displaced using relatively small current densities [12], stabilized under an applied magnetic field [13] and, when interfaced with a gate dielectric, controlled by an applied electric field [14][15][16][17]. More generally, the topological nature of a spin texture is characterized by the topological charge or skyrmion winding number [18][19][20][21].…”