Room-temperature helimagnetism in FeGe thin films

Abstract Chiral magnets are promising materials for the realisation of high-density and low-power spintronic memory devices. For these future applications, a key requirement is the synthesis of appropriate materials in the form of thin films ordering well above room temperature. Driven by the Dzyalo...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: S. L. Zhang, I. Stasinopoulos, T. Lancaster, F. Xiao, A. Bauer, F. Rucker, A. A. Baker, A. I. Figueroa, Z. Salman, F. L. Pratt, S. J. Blundell, T. Prokscha, A. Suter, J. Waizner, M. Garst, D. Grundler, G. van der Laan, C. Pfleiderer, T. Hesjedal
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Publishing Group 2017-03-01
Series:Scientific Reports
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-00201-z
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Summary:Abstract Chiral magnets are promising materials for the realisation of high-density and low-power spintronic memory devices. For these future applications, a key requirement is the synthesis of appropriate materials in the form of thin films ordering well above room temperature. Driven by the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, the cubic compound FeGe exhibits helimagnetism with a relatively high transition temperature of 278 K in bulk crystals. We demonstrate that this temperature can be enhanced significantly in thin films. Using x-ray scattering and ferromagnetic resonance techniques, we provide unambiguous experimental evidence for long-wavelength helimagnetic order at room temperature and magnetic properties similar to the bulk material. We obtain α intr = 0.0036 ± 0.0003 at 310 K for the intrinsic damping parameter. We probe the dynamics of the system by means of muon-spin rotation, indicating that the ground state is reached via a freezing out of slow dynamics. Our work paves the way towards the fabrication of thin films of chiral magnets that host certain spin whirls, so-called skyrmions, at room temperature and potentially offer integrability into modern electronics.
ISSN:2045-2322