Skyrmion pinning energetics in thin film systems

Raphael Gruber, Jakub Zázvorka, Maarten A. Brems, Davi R. Rodrigues, Takaaki Dohi, Nico Kerber, Boris Seng, Mehran Vafaee, Karin Everschor-Sitte, Peter Virnau and Mathias Kläui ()
Additional contact information
Raphael Gruber: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Jakub Zázvorka: Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University
Maarten A. Brems: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Davi R. Rodrigues: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Takaaki Dohi: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Nico Kerber: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Boris Seng: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Mehran Vafaee: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Karin Everschor-Sitte: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Peter Virnau: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Mathias Kläui: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract A key issue for skyrmion dynamics and devices are pinning effects present in real systems. While posing a challenge for the realization of conventional skyrmionics devices, exploiting pinning effects can enable non-conventional computing approaches if the details of the pinning in real samples are quantified and understood. We demonstrate that using thermal skyrmion dynamics, we can characterize the pinning of a sample and we ascertain the spatially resolved energy landscape. To understand the mechanism of the pinning, we probe the strong skyrmion size and shape dependence of the pinning. Magnetic microscopy imaging demonstrates that in contrast to findings in previous investigations, for large skyrmions the pinning originates at the skyrmion boundary and not at its core. The boundary pinning is strongly influenced by the very complex pinning energy landscape that goes beyond the conventional effective rigid quasi-particle description. This gives rise to complex skyrmion shape distortions and allows for dynamic switching of pinning sites and flexible tuning of the pinning.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-30743-4 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-30743-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-30743-4

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().