Skyrmions in Thin Films, Interfaces and Antiferromagnetism

Magnetic skyrmions are small whirling topological defects in a texture magnetization state. Their stabilization and dynamics depend strongly on their topological properties. Skyrmions are induced by non-centrosymmetric crystal structure of magnetic compounds and thin films. Skyrmions are extremely small, with diameters in the nanometer range, and behave as particles that can be created, moved and annihilated. This makes them suitable for information storage and logic technologies. Skyrmions had been observed only at low temperature, and mostly under large applied magnetic fields. An intense research in this field has led to the identification of skyrmions in thin-film and multilayer structures in these heterostrutres skyrmions are able to survive at room temperature and can be manipulated by electrical currents. Utilizing interlayer magnetic exchange bias with synthetic antiferromagnet with can be used to isolated antiferromagnetic skyrmions at room temperature. The development of skyrmion-based topological spintronics holds promise for applications in the writing, processing and reading functionalities at room temperature and can be extended further to all-electrical manipulation spintronics.