Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction across an Antiferromagnet-Ferromagnet Interface

Xin Ma; Guoqiang Yu; Seyed A Razavi; Stephen S Sasaki; Xiang Li; Kai Hao; Sarah H Tolbert; Kang L Wang; Xiaoqin Li

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.027202

Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction across an Antiferromagnet-Ferromagnet Interface

Phys Rev Lett. 2017 Jul 14;119(2):027202. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.027202. Epub 2017 Jul 14.

Authors

Xin Ma¹, Guoqiang Yu², Seyed A Razavi², Stephen S Sasaki³, Xiang Li², Kai Hao¹, Sarah H Tolbert^{3

4}, Kang L Wang^{2

5}, Xiaoqin Li¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, Center for Quantum systems, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712, USA.
² Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
³ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.
⁵ Department of Physics, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA.

PMID: 28753324
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.027202

Abstract

The antiferromagnet- (AFM-)ferromagnet (FM) interfaces are of central importance in recently developed pure electric or ultrafast control of FM spins, where the underlying mechanisms remain unresolved. Here we report the direct observation of an Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) across the AFM-FM interface of IrMn/CoFeB thin films. The interfacial DMI is quantitatively measured from the asymmetric spin-wave dispersion in the FM layer using Brillouin light scattering. The DMI strength is enhanced by a factor of 7 with increasing IrMn layer thickness in the range of 1-7.5 nm. Our findings provide deeper insight into the coupling at the AFM-FM interface and may stimulate new device concepts utilizing chiral spin textures such as magnetic Skyrmions in AFM-FM heterostructures.