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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Writing and deleting skyrmions with electric fields in a multiferroic heterostructure

Chao-Kai Li, Xu-Ping Yao, and Gang Chen*

  • Department of Physics and HKU-UCAS Joint Institute for Theoretical and Computational Physics at Hong Kong, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

  • *gangchen@hku.hk
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Phys. Rev. Research 3, L012026 – Published 16 March, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.L012026

Abstract

Magnetic skyrmions are topological spin textures that can be used as information carriers for the next-generation information storage and processing. The electric-field controlling of skyrmions in such devices is essential but remains technologically challenging. Here, using the first-principle calculation and the Ginzburg-Landau theory, we propose a reliable process for writing and deleting skyrmions by electric fields, on the platform of a multiferroic heterostructure, particularly the Cr2Ge2Te6/In2Se3 heterostructure. We show that the electric field controls the electric polarization and indirectly influences the antisymmetric Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) between the magnetic moments. The latter is responsible for the generation and removal of the skyrmion spin textures, and we study this mechanism by the Ginzburg-Landau analysis. We discuss the real-space Berry curvature, topological Hall effects, possible quantum anomalous Hall effect, and other competing magnetic structures. These results represent examples of quantum technology and may have potential applications in future skyrmionics and the device fabrication.

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Phys. Rev. Research 3, L012026– Published 16 March, 2021
  • Received 21 December 2020
  • Accepted 25 February 2021
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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