Additive interfacial chiral interaction in multilayers for stabilization of small individual skyrmions at room temperature.

Facing the ever-growing demand for data storage will most probably require a new paradigm. Nanoscale magnetic skyrmions are anticipated to solve this issue as they are arguably the smallest spin textures in magnetic thin films in nature. We designed cobalt-based multilayered thin films in which the cobalt layer is sandwiched between two heavy metals and so provides additive interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions (DMIs), which reach a value close to 2 mJ m(-2) in the case of the Ir|Co|Pt asymmetric multilayers. Using a magnetization-sensitive scanning X-ray transmission microscopy technique, we imaged small magnetic domains at very low fields in these multilayers. The study of their behaviour in a perpendicular magnetic field allows us to conclude that they are actually magnetic skyrmions stabilized by the large DMI. This discovery of stable sub-100 nm individual skyrmions at room temperature in a technologically relevant material opens the way for device applications in the near future.

The effect of magnetic anisotropy on the spin configurations of patterned La(0.7)Sr(0.3)MnO3 elements.

We study the effect of magnetocrystalline anisotropy on the magnetic configurations of La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 bar and triangle elements using photoemission electron microscopy imaging. The dominant remanent state is a low energy flux-closure state for both thin (15 nm) and thick (50 nm) elements. The magnetocrystalline anisotropy, which competes with the dipolar energy, causes a strong modification of the spin configuration in the thin elements, depending on the shape, size and orientation of the structures. We investigate the magnetic switching processes and observe in triangular shaped elements a displacement of the vortex core along the easy axis for an external magnetic field applied close to the hard axis, which is well reproduced by micromagnetic simulations.