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Electrifying skyrmion bubbles

An electrical analogue of the magnetic-skyrmion bubble — a swirling arrangement of magnetic moments — has been unveiled in an artificially layered oxide material, raising prospects of new physics and applications.
  1. Pavlo Zubko

    1. Pavlo Zubko is at the London Centre for Nanotechnology, London WC1H 0AH, UK, and in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, London.

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Like a pesky cowlick that can’t be tamed no matter how much you threaten it with a comb, tiny whorls of magnetic moments (spins), known as skyrmions and found in magnetic materials, can be extremely persistent, thanks to their specific topology1. And, just like hairdos, skyrmions and their various relatives come in many shapes and sizes, and with a mishmash of unusual names, such as hedgehogs, anti-hedgehogs and skyrmion bubbles. Skyrmions have been thoroughly studied since their experimental observation a decade ago2,3 and promise denser and faster magnetic data-storage devices, but their electrical analogues have been elusive. Now, in a combined experimental and theoretical study in Nature, Das et al.4 demonstrate that ordered arrays of polar-skyrmion bubbles — electrical cousins of magnetic-skyrmion bubbles — can be stabilized in artificially layered oxide materials.

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Nature 568, 322-323 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01139-0

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