IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v6y2015i1d10.1038_ncomms9957.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Magnetic microscopy and topological stability of homochiral Néel domain walls in a Pt/Co/AlOx trilayer

Author

Listed:
  • M. J. Benitez

    (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow)

  • A. Hrabec

    (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leeds)

  • A. P. Mihai

    (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leeds)

  • T. A. Moore

    (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leeds)

  • G. Burnell

    (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leeds)

  • D. McGrouther

    (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow)

  • C. H. Marrows

    (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leeds)

  • S. McVitie

    (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow)

Abstract

The microscopic magnetization variation in magnetic domain walls in thin films is a crucial property when considering the torques driving their dynamic behaviour. For films possessing out-of-plane anisotropy normally the presence of Néel walls is not favoured due to magnetostatic considerations. However, they have the right structure to respond to the torques exerted by the spin Hall effect. Their existence is an indicator of the interfacial Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction (DMI). Here we present direct imaging of Néel domain walls with a fixed chirality in device-ready Pt/Co/AlOx films using Lorentz transmission electron and Kerr microscopies. It is shown that any independently nucleated pair of walls in our films form winding pairs when they meet that are difficult to annihilate with field, confirming that they all possess the same topological winding number. The latter is enforced by the DMI. The field required to annihilate these winding wall pairs is used to give a measure of the DMI strength. Such domain walls, which are robust against collisions with each other, are good candidates for dense data storage.

Suggested Citation

  • M. J. Benitez & A. Hrabec & A. P. Mihai & T. A. Moore & G. Burnell & D. McGrouther & C. H. Marrows & S. McVitie, 2015. "Magnetic microscopy and topological stability of homochiral Néel domain walls in a Pt/Co/AlOx trilayer," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 6(1), pages 1-7, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms9957
    DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9957
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms9957
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/ncomms9957?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chenhui Zhang & Ze Jiang & Jiawei Jiang & Wa He & Junwei Zhang & Fanrui Hu & Shishun Zhao & Dongsheng Yang & Yakun Liu & Yong Peng & Hongxin Yang & Hyunsoo Yang, 2024. "Above-room-temperature chiral skyrmion lattice and Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction in a van der Waals ferromagnet Fe3−xGaTe2," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-9, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms9957. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.