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  • Fast current-driven domain ...
    Caretta, Lucas; Mann, Maxwell; Büttner, Felix; Ueda, Kohei; Pfau, Bastian; Günther, Christian M; Hessing, Piet; Churikova, Alexandra; Klose, Christopher; Schneider, Michael; Engel, Dieter; Marcus, Colin; Bono, David; Bagschik, Kai; Eisebitt, Stefan; Beach, Geoffrey S D

    Nature nanotechnology, 12/2018, Volume: 13, Issue: 12
    Journal Article

    Spintronics is a research field that aims to understand and control spins on the nanoscale and should enable next-generation data storage and manipulation. One technological and scientific key challenge is to stabilize small spin textures and to move them efficiently with high velocities. For a long time, research focused on ferromagnetic materials, but ferromagnets show fundamental limits for speed and size. Here, we circumvent these limits using compensated ferrimagnets. Using ferrimagnetic Pt/Gd Co /TaO films with a sizeable Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, we realize a current-driven domain wall motion with a speed of 1.3 km s near the angular momentum compensation temperature (T ) and room-temperature-stable skyrmions with minimum diameters close to 10 nm near the magnetic compensation temperature (T ). Both the size and dynamics of the ferrimagnet are in excellent agreement with a simplified effective ferromagnet theory. Our work shows that high-speed, high-density spintronics devices based on current-driven spin textures can be realized using materials in which T and T are close together.