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Building skyrmions through frustration

Nature Materials volume 21, pages 265–266 (2022)Cite this article

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Imaging the magnetic structure in non-centrosymmetric nanoparticles reveals the emergence of a new spin texture, the skyrmionic vortex, stabilized through a chiral geometric frustration.

In the race for ever-shrinking, more energy-efficient electronics, taking advantage of the mathematical concept of topology has allowed for explosive growth in the field of spintronics, wherein the electron spin plays the role of the basic carrier of information, replacing the role of charge1. This is typically done by taking advantage of changes to the electrical resistance when an electron passes through regions of varying magnetization, such as at a domain boundary2. Skyrmionic structures, point-like regions in a magnetic material wherein the magnetization reverses direction, have emerged as some of the smallest topological magnetic objects that can be efficiently manipulated3,4. Until now, skyrmionic structures have been extensively studied in bulk (three dimensions (3D)), thin-film (2D) and even nanowire (1D) magnetic structures. However, the observation of skyrmionic objects in 0D, in which the particle size and magnetic structure have the same characteristic length scale, has remained elusive. This is a result of both materials engineering challenges, that is, constructing materials with the correct geometric and magnetic properties in which skyrmions and skyrmion-like magnetic objects exist as stable structures, and the difficulty in imaging the magnetic structure of such small objects. Now, writing in Nature Materials, Kodai Niitsu and colleagues report that they have pushed the limits to 0D, generating a new type of object termed a skyrmionic vortex in tetrahedral iron germanide (FeGe) nanoparticles of widths down to 70 nm by taking advantage of a property called geometric magnetic frustration5.

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Fig. 1: Electron holography of skyrmions in 0D.

References

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  1. Department of Physics and Materials Science, The University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA

    Shawn David Pollard

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  1. Shawn David Pollard
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Correspondence to Shawn David Pollard.

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Pollard, S.D. Building skyrmions through frustration. Nat. Mater. 21, 265–266 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-022-01208-2

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