磁斯格明子研究现状综述

Research Progress of Magnetic Skyrmions

磁斯格明子是具有拓扑保护的涡旋磁结构,它因尺寸小、结构稳定、易调控、驱动阈值电流小等诸多优点,有望成为下一代高容量、高速读写、低功耗、非易失性信息存储及逻辑运算的信息载体.它在基础前沿物理研究中的意义以及在未来的信息技术中具有广泛的应用前景,吸引了众多研究者的兴趣.目前已经发现的磁斯格明子能在不同材料体系中跨多个温度区域存在,如低温区B20型中心对称破缺的块体材料或室温区的磁性薄膜材料,以及最近预言的二维单层磁性Janus材料.在这些材料体系中,结构对称性破缺和自旋轨道耦合导致的Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya相互作用(DMI)是诱导诸如磁斯格明子等手性磁结构稳定存在的关键因素.简要介绍磁斯格明子的发展历程,归纳总结磁斯格明子的材料体系、研究方法以及基于磁斯格明子的电子学器件,并着重从第一性原理计算的角度出发探讨DMI的物理本质.

Magnetic skyrmion,as a nanomagnetic structure with topologically protected property,has received wide attention.Magnetic skyrmion is expected to function as an ideal information carrier for ultra-high density magnetic storage and logic functionaldevice in the future due to its superior properties,such as high ability,small size,nonvolatile storage and low driving current density for motion.The materials with magnetic skyrmion include not only low temperature B20-type ferromagnets with centrosymmetry breaking,but also the ferromagnetic multilayers over room temperature.Moreover,the two-dimensional Janus magnetic materials have attracted much attention,which are predicted by First-Principles calculations.In these materials,Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction(DMI)plays the important role in stabilizing magnetic skyrmion,which originates from the lack of spatial inversion symmetry and spin-orbit coupling.Magnetic skyrmion can be stable from lower temperatures to room temperature,and even to higher temperature.In this review paper,we briefly introduce the history of magnetic skyrmion,the materials with magnetic skyrmion,the research method and a number of skyrmion-based devices.More importantly,we mainly discuss the physical mechanism of DMI and interfacial DMI by the perspective of First-Principles calculations.