Room-temperature chirality switching in a helimagnetic thin film

Helimagnetic structures, in which the magnetic moments are spirally ordered, host an internal degree of freedom called chirality (or helicity) corresponding to the handedness of the helix. It hosts an internal degree of freedom called chirality (or helicity) corresponding to the handedness of the helix. The chirality seems quite robust against disturbances and is therefore promising for next-generation magnetic memory. While the chirality control was recently achieved by the magnetic field sweep with the application of an electric current at low temperature in a conducting helimagnet[1], problems such as low working temperature and cumbersome control sequence have to be solved in practical applications. Another issue is the thin film fabrication that enables the development of spintronic devices based on helimagnets. Here we show chirality switching by electric current pulses at room temperature in a thin-film MnAu₂ helimagnetic conductor[2]. The result demonstrates the feasibility of helimagnet-based spintronics that can overcome all the above problems.

[1] N. Jiang et al. Nat. Commun. 11, 1601 (2020).

[2] H. Masuda et al. arXiv: 2205.13112 (2022).