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Chemisorption-Induced Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interactions

Invited

Abstract

Chiral spin textures lead to a host of fascinating phenomena due to their topologically protected spin configurations and emergent electromagnetic field, offering great potential for novel concepts in low dissipation magnetic information storage [1-3]. The most widely used mechanism to stabilize magnetic chirality is the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction (DMI), originating from broken inversion symmetry. To date, sufficiently large DMI has been found in a limited set of bulk materials with chiral lattice, and in magnetic thin films adjacent to heavy metals or oxides.

Using a magnetic imaging technique, we have previously discovered that chiral spin textures are induced at graphene/ferromagnet interfaces due to a Rashba-type DMI [4]. More recently, we have found that chemisorbed species such as oxygen [5] (which is different from the ionic oxygen in oxides) and hydrogen [6] on the surface of ferromagnetic films can induce significant DMI, despite their low atomic number. We find that the DMI at the oxygen/ferromagnet interface is comparable to that at ferromagnet/transition-metal interfaces. This large DMI has enabled direct tailoring of skyrmions winding number and wall type at room temperature via oxygen chemisorption. We have also demonstrated a sensitive and reversible chirality switching of magnetic domain walls via hydrogen chemisorption/desorption [6]. These results extend the understanding of the DMI induced by the light elements and support chemisorption related design of spin-orbitronics and magneto-ionic devices.

[1] R. Wiesendanger, Nat. Rev. Mater. 1, 16044 (2016).
[2] A. Fert, et al. Nat. Rev. Mater. 2, 17031 (2017).
[3] W. Jiang, et al. Phys. Rep. 704, 1 (2017).
[4] H. Yang, G. Chen, et al. Nat. Mater. 17, 605 (2018).
[5] G. Chen, et al. Sci. Adv. 6, eaba4924 (2020).
[6] G. Chen, et al. under review.

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Presenters

  • Gong Chen

    Georgetown University, Physics Department, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA

Authors

  • Gong Chen

    Georgetown University, Physics Department, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA

  • Arantzazu Mascaraque

    Universidad Complutense de Madrid

  • Hongying Jia

    Forschungszentrum Jülich, Peter Grünberg Institut and Institute for Advanced Simulation, Forschungszentrum Jülich and JARA

  • Bernd Zimmermann

    Forschungszentrum Jülich

  • Maccallum Robertson

    University of California, Davis

  • Roberto Lo Conte

    University of Hamburg, Department of Physics, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

  • Colin Ophus

    Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL, National Center for Electron Microscopy, Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

  • Andre Luis Fernandes Cauduro

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

  • Markus Hoffmann

    Forschungszentrum Jülich, Peter Grünberg Institut and Institute for Advanced Simulation, Forschungszentrum Jülich and JARA

  • MIGUEL BARRIO

    Universidad Complutense de Madrid

  • Haifeng Ding

    Nanjing University

  • Roland Wiesendanger

    University of Hamburg, Department of Physics, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

  • Enrique G Michel

    Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

  • Stefan Bluegel

    Forschungszentrum Jülich, Peter Grünberg Institute and Institute for Advance Simulation, Forschungszentrum Jülich and JARA, Peter Grünberg Institut and Institute for Advanced Simulation, Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH, Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI-1), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Peter Gruenberg Institut, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Peter Grünberg Institut and Institute for Advanced Simulation, Forschungszentrum Jülich and JARA

  • Andreas Schmid

    Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, National Center for Electron Microscopy, Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

  • Kai Liu

    Georgetown University, Physics Department, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA