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Exploring and discovering various types of skyrmions has enriched the fundamental study and the active skyrmionics aiming at using skyrmions in spintronics due to the advantages of global stability as high-density magnetic information bit. The unique capability to introduce abundant spin structures, physical phenomena, and dynamics due to the interactions of 4f and 3d electrons push the rare-earth–transition metal (RE–TM) magnets into the research frontier again. Herein, the exotic magnetic domain configurations are discovered in traditional ThMn12-type RE–TM magnets. It is clearly demonstrated that the magnetic anisotropy alteration and magnetic coupling between the respective RE and TM sublattices are responsible for the abundant magnetic domain evolution. In particular, the field-free biskyrmions at room temperature and tunable spin texture transformation are successfully obtained via manipulating the in-plane magnetic anisotropy, which has broadened the physical mechanism and application exploration of manipulating ferrimagnetic order to generate topological spin structures in strategic rare-earth magnets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploration and manipulation of topological protected magnetic swirls, such as skyrmion, antiskyrmion, meron, and vortex, holds significance for fundamental research and practical applications in high‐density magnetic information storage and spintronics because of their high storage density and low driven current. This study unveils the existence of field‐free spontaneous (anti)meron chains with a topological charge of ±1/2 in the centrosymmetric rare‐earth magnet Tb6Co2.17Si2.5 via in situ real‐space observation. The spin reorientation transition from in‐plane to uniaxial anisotropy contributes to the spontaneous transformation from straight domain walls to topological (anti)meron chains and to stripe domains along the [110] zone axis during in situ cooling. The study further confirms the critical role of the noncollinear magnetic structure of Tb atoms in the formation of topological (anti)meron chains via real‐space observations, first‐principles calculations, and micromagnetic simulations. The spontaneous topological magnetic texture is strongly correlated with the 4f electrons of rare‐earth atoms, enriching and stimulating alternative generation mechanisms of topological spin textures from emerging rare‐earth magnets, and further applications in spintronics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rare-earth RMn6Sn6 magnets reattract the attention due to their recently discovered topological properties in a strong correlation with a kagome magnetic lattice and different rare-earth magnetic elements. To understand the microscopic mechanism and discover topological spin textures, we report here the real-space observation of temperature-induced spin reorientation transition in RMn6Sn6 (R = Ho, Dy) magnets. The magnetic domain evolution corresponding to the magnetization deviation from the ab-plane into a cone state is in situ demonstrated by using Lorenz transmission electron microscopy and, moreover, individual biskyrmions are generated at room temperature under an external magnetic field in DyMn6Sn6. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exploration of non-collinear spin texture in the f-electron-based rare-earth magnets has attracted fascinating interest for its fundamental physics and potential spintronic applications. Here, the real-space observation of nanometric helical spin order with the period down to 20 nm in centrosymmetric TbGa magnets was presented by Lorentz transmission electron microscopy. It was found that the helical period and the initial temperature for the appearance of the periodic helix can be tuned by the thickness of single-crystal TbGa plates (71–169 nm). Furthermore, the domain evolution under the perpendicular magnetic fields and with the shape constriction reveals the high stability of the stripe domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]