1. Néel-type skyrmion in WTe2/Fe3GeTe2 van der Waals heterostructure
- Author
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Caihua Wan, Wei Wang, Xiufeng Han, Kang L. Wang, Jiadong Zang, Kin Fai Ellick Wong, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Qiming Shao, Gen Yin, Senfu Zhang, Junwei Zhang, Yingying Wu, Xixiang Zhang, Jin Hu, Chi Fang, Zhiqiang Mao, and Yang Lin Zhu
- Subjects
Magnetic domain ,Lorentz transformation ,Science ,General Physics and Astronomy ,02 engineering and technology ,01 natural sciences ,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology ,Article ,symbols.namesake ,Hall effect ,Electronic and spintronic devices ,Lattice (order) ,0103 physical sciences ,Electronic devices ,010306 general physics ,lcsh:Science ,Physics ,Condensed Matter - Materials Science ,Multidisciplinary ,Condensed matter physics ,Condensed Matter - Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics ,Skyrmion ,Heterojunction ,General Chemistry ,Spintronics ,021001 nanoscience & nanotechnology ,Condensed Matter::Mesoscopic Systems and Quantum Hall Effect ,Condensed Matter::Soft Condensed Matter ,Transmission electron microscopy ,symbols ,lcsh:Q ,Condensed Matter::Strongly Correlated Electrons ,van der Waals force ,0210 nano-technology - Abstract
The promise of high-density and low-energy-consumption devices motivates the search for layered structures that stabilize chiral spin textures such as topologically protected skyrmions. At the same time, layered structures provide a new platform for the discovery of new physics and effects. Recently discovered long-range intrinsic magnetic orders in the two-dimensional van der Waals materials offer new opportunities. Here we demonstrate the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and N\'eel-type skyrmions are induced at the WTe2/Fe3GeTe2 interface. Fe3GeTe2 is a ferromagnetic material with strong perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. We demonstrate that the strong spin orbit interaction in 1T'-WTe2 does induce a large interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction at the interface with Fe3GeTe2 due to the inversion symmetry breaking to stabilize skyrmions. Transport measurements show the topological Hall effect in this heterostructure for temperatures below 100 K. Furthermore, Lorentz transmission electron microscopy is used to directly image N\'eel-type skyrmions along with aligned and stripe-like domain structure. This interfacial coupling induced Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction is estimated to have a large energy of 1.0 mJ/m^2, which can stabilize the N\'eel-type skyrmions in this heterostructure. This work paves a path towards the skyrmionic devices based on van der Waals heterostructures., Comment: 32 pages, 4 figures in the main text
- Published
- 2020