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Plenary Speaker

Dr. Stanislas Rohart

Laboratory of Solid State Physics (LPS), University Paris-Saclay, CNRS, Orsay, France

Probing Magnetic Skyrmions Dynamics in Ferromagnetic and Synthetic Antiferromagnetic Films

 

Magnetic skyrmions are topologically protected chiral solitons that have garnered significant attention due to their potential applications in low-power memory and logic devices. These nanoscale magnetic textures are stabilized by the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI), a chiral magnetic exchange that imparts a non-trivial topology to the system. Their solitonic nature, in a sense that their energy is independent on their position, together with their sensitivity to electrical current, enable to study their motion in magnetic tracks, an aspect that could be used in spintronic application.

The finite stability as well as the ease to move them is a challenge for magnetic force microscopy imaging. Indeed, since perturbation is inherent to this technique, magnetic states can be modified while imaging. In antiferromagnetic samples, this effect is lower, but the sample is subsequently reduced. In this talk, we describe the solutions that we implemented to enable such studies, based on home-made AFM tip functionalization. We also show how nanosecond-long current pulses are implemented directly in the microscope to enable current induced dynamic investigations. Concerning the physics of skyrmions, we compare the dynamics in ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic films to evidence key direction for future developments.