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Skyrmions on the track

Nature Nanotechnology volume 8, pages 152–156 (2013)Cite this article

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Magnetic skyrmions are nanoscale spin configurations that hold promise as information carriers in ultradense memory and logic devices owing to the extremely low spin-polarized currents needed to move them.

Today's hard-disk drives achieve very high densities of information storage, but the complexity and fragility of their mechanical parts motivate the need for solid-state devices with comparable or higher bit densities. The archetype of such devices is the so-called racetrack memory5 in which the information is coded in a magnetic nanoribbon by a train of up or down magnetic domains separated by domain walls (DWs). The train of DWs can be moved electrically by spin torque to read or write the magnetic information. However, challenges such as reducing the critical currents for DW motion while keeping high velocities and avoiding the detrimental effects of defects must be addressed before this approach can be translated into a competitive technology. The intrinsic properties of magnetic skyrmions might help tackle most of these issues.

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Figure 1: Spins in a skyrmion.
Figure 2: Detection of skyrmions and a phase diagram.
Figure 3: Skyrmion velocity.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the support of S. Rohart and A. Thiaville from LPS (Université Paris-Sud/CNRS), Orsay, France for the numerical calculations of Fig. 3, and K. Everschor who helped in the preparation of some of the figures.

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  1. Albert Fert, Vincent Cros and João Sampaio are at the Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS/Thales and Université Paris-Sud, Palaiseau, France,

    Albert Fert, Vincent Cros & João Sampaio

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Correspondence to Albert Fert.

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Fert, A., Cros, V. & Sampaio, J. Skyrmions on the track. Nature Nanotech 8, 152–156 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2013.29

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