Creating and manipulating skyrmions with helium ions

Researchers from Spintec and their Paris-based partners* successfully generated and controlled the movement of magnetic pseudo particles called skyrmions by first irradiating a magnetic track with helium ions. Until now, skyrmions were impossible to control, moving toward the edges of the track and disappearing.
This advance bodes well for the use of skyrmions to build processors and memory.
Here, the “trains” of skyrmions the researchers were able to create on the tracks were a few hundred “cars” long.
When an electrical current was applied, the skyrmions moved along the irradiated area, even if the current was not perfectly aligned with it. The technique was tested on a 200 nm wide track, but simulations indicate that it could work on a track as narrow as 10 nm.

*C2N (CNRS) and startup Spin-Ion

Contact: olivier.boulle@cea.fr

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