Skyrmions

Magnetic skyrmions have so far been treated as two-dimensional spin structures characterized by a topological winding number. However, in real systems with the finite thickness of the device material being larger than the magnetic exchange length, the skyrmion spin texture extends into the third dimension and cannot be assumed as homogeneous.

A 3D reconstruction of a skyrmion derived from X-ray images. Credit: Berkeley Lab

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Swiss Light Source (Paul Scherrer Institute) and Western Digital Research Center have used soft x-ray laminography to reconstruct, with about 20-nanometer spatial (voxel) size, the full three-dimensional spin texture of a skyrmion in an 800-nanometer-diameter and 95-nanometer-thin disk patterned into a 30× [iridium/cobalt/platinum] multilayered film.

An international team of researchers, led by scientists from the CNRS, has reported that the magnetic nanobubbles known as skyrmions can be moved by electrical currents, attaining record speeds up to 900 m/s.

Magnetic skyrmions are topological magnetic textures that hold great promise as nanoscale bits of information in memory and logic devices. While room-temperature ferromagnetic skyrmions and their current-induced manipulation have been demonstrated, their velocity has thus far been limited to about 100 meters per second, which is too slow for computing applications. In addition, their dynamics are perturbed by the skyrmion Hall effect, a motion transverse to the current direction caused by the skyrmion topological charge. 

Researchers at Japan's RIKEN have conducted an experiment that could help the development of new energy-efficient spintronics devices. They used heat and magnetic fields to create transformations between spin textures—magnetic vortices and antivortices known as skyrmions and antiskyrmions—in a single crystal thin plate device. What's even more important is that they achieved this at room temperature.

Skyrmions and antiskyrmions, which are textures that exist within special magnetic materials involving the spin of the electrons in the material, are an active area of research, as they could be used for next-generation memory devices, for example, with skyrmions acting as a "1" bit and antiskyrmions a "0" bit. In the past, scientists have been able to move them in a variety of ways, and to create transformations between them using electric current. However, because current electronic devices consume electrical power and produce waste heat, the researchers in the group, led by Xiuzhen Yu at the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science, decided to see if they could find a way to create the transformations using heat gradients.

Researchers from Japan's RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS) and Ochanomizu University, UK's  University of Birmingham, Sweden's Lund University, Canada's Université de Sherbrooke, Czech Republic's Nuclear Physics Institute, France's Institut Max von Laue-Paul Langevin (ILL) have advanced low-energy devices based on spintronics, by measuring the dynamics of tiny magnetic vortices.

The team examined the low-energy excitations of the skyrmion state in MnSi by using the neutron spin-echo technique under small-angle neutron scattering conditions. The scientists observed an asymmetric dispersion of the phason excitations of the lattice because of the string-like structure of the skyrmion cores.

Researchers from the University of Waterloo, NIST and McMaster University have used neutron imaging and a reconstruction algorithm to reveal for the first time the 3D shapes and dynamics of skyrmions in bulk materials.

The combined image reveals the shape and length of the skyrmion tubes, which vary in response to defects encountered in the surrounding material lattice. Credit: Phys.org, adapted from Nature Physics (2023)

The team is exploring a promising spintronic candidate, a magnetic skyrmion, which is a vortex-like formation of atoms. It arises naturally in certain kinds of atomic lattices in response to magnetic and electrical properties of the surrounding atoms. Skyrmions are typically in the range of 20 to 200 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in size. 

Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the University of Konstanz and Tohoku University in Japan have increased the diffusion of magnetic whirls, so called skyrmions, by a factor of ten.

Science often does not simply consider the spin of an individual electron, but rather magnetic whirls composed of numerous spins. These whirls, called skyrmions, emerge in magnetic metallic thin layers and can be considered as two-dimensional quasi-particles. On the one hand, the whirls can be deliberately moved by applying a small electric current to the thin layers; on the other hand, they move randomly and extremely efficiently due to diffusion. The feasibility of creating a functional computer based on skyrmions was demonstrated by a team of researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), led by Professor Dr. Mathias Kläui, using an initial prototype. This prototype consisted of thin, stacked metallic layers, some only a few atomic layers thick.

A new study at BESSY II analyzes the formation of skyrmions in ferrimagnetic thin films of dysprosium and cobalt in real time and with high spatial resolution. This could be an important step towards characterizing suitable materials with skyrmions more precisely. 

Magnetic skyrmions are tiny vortices-like of magnetic spin textures that can, in principle, be used for spintronic devices. But currently it is still difficult to control and manipulate skyrmions at room temperature.

Researchers from the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS), Konkuk University, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) and Pusan National University have pioneered the world's first transistor capable of controlling skyrmions. This breakthrough paves the way for the development of next-generation ultra-low-power devices and is anticipated to make significant contributions to quantum and AI research. 

Skyrmions, arranged in a vortex-like spin structure, are unique because they can be miniaturized to several nanometers, making them movable with exceptionally low power. This characteristic positions them as a crucial element in the evolution of spintronics applications.

Researchers at Switzerland EPFL, China's Anhui University, Germany's University of Cologne and University of New Hampshire in the US have developed a technique that can visualize and control the rotation of a handful of spins arranged in a vortex-like texture at the fastest speed ever achieved. The breakthrough can advance spintronics devices like computer memory, logic gates, and high-precision sensors.

"The visualization and deterministic control of very few spins has not yet been achieved at the ultrafast timescales," says Dr. Phoebe Tengdin, a postdoc at EPFL, pointing out the very tight timeframes that this control needs to happen for spintronics to ever make the leap into applications. Now, the team developed a new technique that can visualize and control the rotation of a handful of spins arranged in a vortex-like texture, a kind of spin "nano-whirlpool" called a skyrmion.

A research team from the Technical University of Kaiserslautern (TUK) has been awarded a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to develop spintronic devices.

Professor Dr. Mathias Weiler, lead of the study, will receive €2 million over the next five years. Scientists are working on spin waves and new spintronic devices that could drastically accelerate the storage, processing, and transmission of information.