Doping control of magnetic anisotropy for stable antiskyrmion formation in schreibersite (Fe,Ni)$_3$P with $S_4$ symmetry

Magnetic skyrmions, vortex-like topological spin textures, have attracted much interest in a wide range of research fields from fundamental physics to spintronics applications. Recently, growing attention has also been paid to antiskyrmions emerging in opposite topological charge in non-centrosymmetric magnets with $D_{2\mathrm{d}}$ or $S_4$ symmetry. In these magnets, complex interplay among anisotropic Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, uniaxial magnetic anisotropy, and magnetic dipolar interactions generates a variety of magnetic structures. However, the relation between the stability of antiskyrmions and these magnetic interactions remains to be elucidated. In this work, we control the uniaxial magnetic anisotropy of schreibersite (Fe,Ni)$_3$P with $S_4$ symmetry by doping and investigate its impact on the stability of antiskyrmions. Our magnetometry study, supported by ferromagnetic resonance spectroscopy, shows that the variation of the Ni content and slight doping with 4$d$ transition metals considerably change the magnetic anisotropy. In particular, doping with Pd induces easy-axis anisotropy, giving rise to formation of antiskyrmions, while a temperature-induced spin reorientation is observed in a Rh-doped compound. In combination with Lorentz transmission electron microscopy and micromagnetic simulations, we quantitatively analyze the stability of antiskyrmion as functions of uniaxial anisotropy and demagnetization energy, and demonstrate that subtle balance between them is necessary to stabilize the antiskyrmions.
Comment: This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Advanced Materials (2022). The final authenticated version is available online at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adma.202108770