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Magnetic skyrmions are currently gaining attention owing to their potential to act as information carriers in spintronic devices. However, conventional techniques which rely on modulating the electric current to write or manipulate information using skyrmions are not energy efficient. Therefore, in this study, a Ta/Co–Fe–B/Ta/MgO junction that hosts a skyrmion was utilized to fabricate a device to investigate the effect of applying a voltage in the direction perpendicular to the film plane. Magneto-optical Kerr effect microscopy was performed in a polar configuration to observe the difference in the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy by observing the behavior of the magnetic domain structure and the skyrmions. Our findings suggest that voltage-induced magnetic domain structure modulation and the creation/annihilation of skyrmions are both possible. Furthermore, manipulation of skyrmions was realized by utilizing repulsive magnetic dipole interaction between the voltage-created skyrmion and skyrmion, exhibiting Brownian motion, outside the top electrode. Thus, our proposed method can enable controlling the creation and annihilation of skyrmions and their positions by manipulating the externally applied voltage. These findings can advance unconventional computing fields, such as stochastic and ultra-low-power computing.

In this study, we investigated the interaction between skyrmions in Brownian motion at room-temperature. Cells containing two skyrmions were implemented by controlling the magnetic anisotropy in the Ta/CoFeB/Ta/MgO/SiO2 structure. The interaction between skyrmions was investigated by fabricating a circuit with two cells in close proximity to each other. It was found that the minimum value of the correlation coefficient was −0.234. These results show that the Brownian motion of skyrmions can potentially realize unconventional computing such as stochastic calculations and ultra-low power computing.

Quasi-maser operations using magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) that amplified the transmission of radio frequency (RF) signals through themselves are demonstrated. We measured the transmittance of heat-driven MTJs using a vector network analyzer and observed that transmittance S21 >1 at sub-GHz frequencies. Furthermore, we installed two of these MTJs in a feedback-loop circuit and investigated the RF signal in the circuit. The results showed that the auto-oscillation mode of the RF signal appeared without phase synchronization of each MTJ because of the amplification effect. Our results will help develop a mechanism for producing coherent microwave signals using multiple MTJs.

Electric control of magnetism has been a topic of interest for various spintronic applications. It is known that monoatomic Pt layer insertion at the Fe/MgO interface increases voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy (VCMA). However, the reason for the optimality of this thickness has not been explained thus far. In this study, we observed the changes in the electronic states at the Fe/MgO interface using tunneling spectroscopy on an epitaxial Fe(001)/Pt/MgO(001) structure to characterize the density of states around the Fermi level. We found that a surface resonant state is formed at the Fermi level by the insertion of a monoatomic Pt layer, which is consistent with our first principles study. In addition, the VCMA enhancement owing to the formation of this surface resonance state agrees with the recently proposed microscopic theory.

Magnetic skyrmions are expected to be promising candidates for information carriers in spintronic devices. In previous work, precise position control of skyrmions has been the main focus of attention for memory and logic applications. Here, with the aim of employing the thermally activated random walk of skyrmion bubbles for logical operations, i.e., token-based Brownian computing, we investigated the dynamics of skyrmion bubbles in W/FeB/Ir/MgO structures. In addition to the observation of Brownian motion of skyrmion bubbles, we demonstrated the electrical control of the diffusion constant by voltage applications. The developed technique would be useful for various kinds of skyrmion-based spintronic devices as well as Brownian computing.

In this study, voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy (VCMA) in Fe|MgO tunnel junctions was investigated via the magneto-optical Kerr effect, soft x-ray absorption spectroscopy, and magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy. The Fe|MgO tunnel junctions showed enhanced perpendicular magnetic anisotropy under external negative voltage, which induced charge depletion at the Fe|MgO interface. Despite the application of voltages of opposite polarity, no trace of chemical reaction such as a redox reaction attributed to O2− migration was detected in the x-ray absorption spectra of the Fe. The VCMA reported in the Fe|MgO-based magnetic tunnel junctions must therefore originate from phenomena associated with the purely electric effect, that is, surface electron doping and/or redistribution induced by an external electric field.

We found that CoFeB|MgO|Ta tunnel junctions exhibit tunnel anisotropic magnetoresistance (TAMR) at room temperature. The tunnel junctions exhibit positive magnetoresistance with the application of a magnetic field normal to the film plane. The dependencies on the applied magnetic field angle and MgO thickness reveal that the magnetoresistance originates from the TAMR, caused by the spin polarization and the spin-orbit interaction at the CoFeB|MgO interface. We also found that the TAMR can be used to detect ferromagnetic resonance in the CoFeB. This detection method could be useful for the characterization of nanomagnets that are free from the spin-transfer effect and the stray field of a reference layer, unlike conventional magnetic tunnel junctions.