Search

Magnetic insulators such as yttrium iron garnets (YIGs) are of paramount importance for spin-wave or magnonic devices as their ultralow damping enables ultralow power dissipation that is free of Joule heating, exotic magnon quantum state, and coherent coupling to other wave excitations. Magnetic insulator heterostructures bestow superior structural and magnetic properties and house immense design space thanks to the strong and engineerable exchange interaction between individual layers. To fully unleash their potential, realizing low damping and strong exchange coupling simultaneously is critical, which often requires high quality interface. Here, we show that such a demand is realized in an all-insulator thulium iron garnet (TmIG)/YIG bilayer system. The ultralow dissipation rates in both YIG and TmIG, along with their significant spin-spin interaction at the interface, enable strong and coherent magnon-magnon coupling with a benchmarking cooperativity value larger than the conventional ferromagnetic metal-based heterostructures. The coupling strength can be tuned by varying the magnetic insulator layer thickness and magnon modes, which is consistent with analytical calculations and micromagnetic simulations. Our results demonstrate TmIG/YIG as a novel platform for investigating hybrid magnonic phenomena and open opportunities in magnon devices comprising all-insulator heterostructures., Comment: 45 pages, 18 figures, and 2 tables

Magnetic tunneling junctions (MTJs) are essential for non-volatile magneto-resistive random access memory (MRAM) applications. Here, we report the observation of a large negative tunneling magneto-resistance (TMR) in the CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB system with an orthogonally-magnetized configuration. Through the thickness modulation of the MgO barrier, the negative TMR component can be enhanced up to 20% under a negative voltage bias. Moreover, the tunnel anisotropic magneto-resistance measurements unveil that the negative TMR component likely arises from the interfacial resonance states (IRS) in the minority band of the bottom ferromagnetic layer. Complementary first principle calculations further quantify the IRS location and strength with respect to the Fermi level position. Our work not only confirm the vital role of IRS in the electrical transport of MTJ, but also provide valuable insights for the design of new-generation voltage-controlled MRAM and related spintronic applications.

Electrical manipulation of skyrmions attracts considerable attention for its rich physics and promising applications. To date, such a manipulation is realized mainly via spin-polarized current based on spin-transfer torque or spin-orbital torque effect. However, this scheme is energy-consuming and may produce massive Joule heating. To reduce energy dissipation and risk of heightened temperatures of skyrmion-based devices, an effective solution is to use electric field instead of current as stimulus. Here, we realize an electric-field manipulation of skyrmions in a nanostructured ferromagnetic/ferroelectrical heterostructure at room temperature via an inverse magneto-mechanical effect. Intriguingly, such a manipulation is non-volatile and exhibits a multi-state feature. Numerical simulations indicate that the electric-field manipulation of skyrmions originates from strain-mediated modification of effective magnetic anisotropy and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. Our results open a direction for constructing low-energy-dissipation, non-volatile, and multi-state skyrmion-based spintronic devices., Comment: Accepted by Nature Communications 11, 3577 (2020)

Nanoscale topologically non-trivial spin textures, such as magnetic skyrmions, have been identified as promising candidates for the transport and storage of information for spintronic applications, notably magnetic racetrack memory devices. The design and realization of single skyrmion chain at room temperature (RT) and above in the low-dimensional nanostructures are of great importance for future practical applications. Here, we report the creation of a single skyrmion bubble chain in a geometrically confined Fe3Sn2 nanostripe with a width comparable to the featured size of a skyrmion bubble. Systematic investigations on the thermal stability have revealed that the single chain of skyrmion bubbles can keep stable at temperatures varying from RT up to a record-high temperature of 630 K. This extreme stability can be ascribed to the weak temperature-dependent magnetic anisotropy and the formation of edge states at the boundaries of the nanostripes. The realization of the highly stable skyrmion bubble chain in a geometrically confined nanostructure is a very important step towards the application of skyrmion-based spintronic devices., Comment: Accepted by Nano Lett. 2018, 18 (2), 1274

The discovery of magnetic skyrmion bubbles in centrosymmetric magnets has been receiving increasing interest from the research community, due to the fascinating physics of topological spin textures and its possible applications to spintronics. However, key challenges remain, such as how to manipulate the nucleation of skyrmion bubbles to exclude the trivial bubbles or metastable skyrmion bubbles that usually coexist with skyrmion bubbles in the centrosymmetric magnets. Here, we report having successfully performed this task by applying spatially geometric confinement to a centrosymmetric frustrated Fe3Sn2 magnet. We demonstrate that the spatially geometric confinement can indeed stabilize the skyrmion bubbles, by effectively suppressing the formation of trivial bubbles and metastable skyrmion bubbles. We also show that the critical magnetic field for the nucleation of the skyrmion bubbles in the confined Fe3Sn2 nanostripes is drastically less, by an order of magnitude, than that what is required in the thin plate without geometrical confinement. By analyzing how the width and thickness of the nanostripes affect the spin textures of skyrmion bubbles, we infer that the topological transition of skyrmion bubbles is closely related to the dipole-dipole interaction, which we find is consistent with theoretical simulations. The results presented here represent an important step forward in manipulating the topological spin textures of skyrmion bubbles, making us closer to achieving the fabrication of skyrmion-based racetrack memory devices., Comment: Accepted by ACS Nano, 2019, 13(1), 922

Recently, giant planar Hall effect originating from chiral anomaly has been predicted in nonmagnetic Dirac/Weyl semimetals. ZrTe5 is considered to be an intriguing Dirac semimetal at the boundary of weak topological insulators and strong topological insulators, though this claim still remains controversial. Here, we report the observation in ZrTe5 of the giant planar Hall resistivity that shows two different magnetic-field dependences as predicted by theory and a maximum at the Lifshitz transition temperature. We found that the giant planar Hall resistivity fades out with decreasing the thickness of ZrTe5 nanoplates, which may be ascribed to the vanishing of the 3D nature of the samples. In addition, we have observed a nontrivial Berry phase, chiral-anomaly-induced negative longitudinal magnetoresistance, and a giant in-plane anisotropic magnetoresistance in these ZrTe5 nanoplates. All the experimental observations demonstrated coherently that ZrTe5 is a Dirac semimetal., Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures

Various and spontaneous magnetic skyrmionic bubbles are experimentally observed for the first time, at room temperature in a frustrated kagome magnet Fe3Sn2 with unixial magnetic anisotropy. The magnetization dynamics were investigated using in-situ Lorentz transmission electron microscopy, revealing that the transformation between different magnetic bubbles and domains are via the motion of Bloch lines driven by applied external magnetic field. The results demonstrate that Fe3Sn2 facilitates a unique magnetic control of topological spin textures at room temperature, making it a promising candidate for further skyrmion-based spintronic devices., Comment: Accept by Advanced Materials. Version of Record online : 7 JUN 2017 DOI: 10.1002/adma.201701144

Here, we report on the experimental discovery of biskyrmion magnetic nanodomains at RT and the observation of a biskyrmion-derived topological Hall effect (THE) in the centrosymmetric hexagonal MnNiGa magnet. Using a phase reconstruction technique based on a transport-of-intensity equation (TIE), we established the texture of the biskyrmion spin. Results from Lorentz transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and the topological Hall effect revealed that the biskyrmion phase is stable over a much wider temperature range (100 K to ~340K) and a larger magnetic field range in our material than in skyrmion-hosting bulk crystals reported previously[1-3,6]. The super-wide operating temperature and the broad range of material options indicate important progress toward the realization of skyrmion-based spintronic devices., Comment: Accepted for publication in advanced materials (DOI: 10.1002/adma.201600889)

Spin-orbit coupling (SOC) is expected to partly determine the topologically nontrivial electronic structure of heavy half-Heusler ternary compounds. However, to date, attempts to experimentally observe either the strength of SOC or how it modifies the bulk band structure have been unsuccessful. By using bulk-sensitive nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy combined with first-principles calculations, we reveal that 209Bi NMR isotropic shifts scale with relativity in terms of the strength of SOC and average atomic numbers, indicating strong relativistic effects on NMR parameters. According to first-principles calculations, we further claim that nuclear magnetic shieldings from relativistic p1/2 states and paramagnetic contributions from low-lying unoccupied p3/2 states are both sensitive to the details of band structures tuned by relativity, which explains why the hidden relativistic effects on band structure can be revealed by 209Bi NMR isotropic shifts in topologically nontrivial half-Heusler compounds. Used in complement to surface-sensitive methods, such as angle resolved photon electron spectroscopy and scanning tunneling spectroscopy, NMR can provide valuable information on bulk electronic states., Comment: accepted for publication in Scientific Reports (2016)

A series of unprecedentedly wide Curie-temperature windows (CTWs) between 40 and 450 K are realized by employing the isostructural alloying principle for the strongly coupled magnetostructural phase transitions in a single host system. The CTWs provide a design platform for magneto-multifunctional multiferroic alloys that can be manipulated in a quite large temperature space in various scales and patterns, as well as by multiple physical fields., Comment: 43 pages, 4 figs, 1 supporting file. Accepted by Advanced Electronic Materials

Materials with high carrier mobility showing large magnetoresistance (MR) have recently received much attention because of potential applications in future high-performance magneto-electric devices. Here, we report on the discovery of an electron-hole-compensated half-Heusler semimetal LuPtBi that exhibits an extremely high electron mobility of up to 79000 cm2/Vs with a non-saturating positive MR as large as 3200% at 2 K. Remarkably, the mobility at 300 K is found to exceed 10500 cm2/Vs, which is among the highest values reported in three-dimensional bulk materials thus far. The clean Shubnikov-de Haas quantum oscillation observed at low temperatures and the first-principles calculations together indicate that the high electron mobility is due to a rather small effective carrier mass caused by the distinctive band structure of the crystal. Our finding provide a new approach for finding large, high-mobility MR materials by designing an appropriate Fermi surface topology starting from simple electron-hole-compensated semimetals., Comment: 26 pages,10 pages, 1 SUPPLEMENTARY, accepted for publication in Physical review B

A large number of half-Heusler compounds have been recently proposed as three-dimensional (3D) topological insulators (TIs) with tunable physical properties.However, no transport measurements associated with the topological surface states have been observed in these half-Heusler candidates due to the dominating contribution from bulk electrical conductance. Here we show that, by reducing the mobility of bulk carriers, a two-dimensional (2D) weak antilocalization (WAL) effect, one of the hallmarks of topological surface states, was experimentally revealed from the tilted magnetic field dependence of magnetoconductance in a topologically nontrivial semimetal LuPdBi. Besides the observation of a 2D WAL effect, a superconducting transition was revealed at Tc~1.7 K in the same bulk LuPdBi. Quantitative analysis within the framework of a generalized BCS theory leads to the conclusion that the noncentrosymmetric superconductivity of LuPdBi is fully gapped with a possibly unconventional pairing character. The co-existence of superconductivity and the transport signature of topological surface states in the same bulk alloy suggests that LuPdBi represents a very promising candidate as a topological superconductor., Comment: 20 pages, 5 Figs. Accepted by Scientific Reports