Long-range chiral exchange interaction in synthetic antiferromagnets

Dong-Soo Han, Kyujoon Lee, Jan-Philipp Hanke, Yuriy Mokrousov, Kyoung-Whan Kim, Woosuk Yoo, Youri L.W. van Hees, Tae-Wan Kim, Reinoud Lavrijsen, Chun-Yeol You, Henk J.M. Swagten, Myung-Hwa Jung (Corresponding author), Mathias Kläui (Corresponding author)

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

63 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

The exchange interaction governs static and dynamic magnetism. This fundamental interaction comes in two flavours-symmetric and antisymmetric. The symmetric interaction leads to ferro- and antiferromagnetism, and the antisymmetric interaction has attracted significant interest owing to its major role in promoting topologically non-trivial spin textures that promise fast, energy-efficient devices. So far, the antisymmetric exchange interaction has been found to be rather short ranged and limited to a single magnetic layer. Here we report a long-range antisymmetric interlayer exchange interaction in perpendicularly magnetized synthetic antiferromagnets with parallel and antiparallel magnetization alignments. Asymmetric hysteresis loops under an in-plane field reveal a unidirectional and chiral nature of this interaction, which results in canted magnetic structures. We explain our results by considering spin-orbit coupling combined with reduced symmetry in multilayers. Our discovery of a long-range chiral interaction provides an additional handle to engineer magnetic structures and could enable three-dimensional topological structures.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)703-708
Number of pages6
JournalNature Materials
Volume18
Issue number7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2019

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