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Room-temperature helimagnetism in FeGe thin films.

S L ZhangI StasinopoulosT LancasterF XiaoA BauerF RuckerA A BakerAdriana I FigueroaZaher SalmanF L PrattS J BlundellThomas ProkschaA SuterJ WaiznerM GarstD GrundlerGerrit van der LaanC PfleidererThorsten Hesjedal
Published in: Scientific reports (2017)
Chiral magnets are promising materials for the realisation of high-density and low-power spintronic memory devices. For these future applications, a key requirement is the synthesis of appropriate materials in the form of thin films ordering well above room temperature. Driven by the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, the cubic compound FeGe exhibits helimagnetism with a relatively high transition temperature of 278 K in bulk crystals. We demonstrate that this temperature can be enhanced significantly in thin films. Using x-ray scattering and ferromagnetic resonance techniques, we provide unambiguous experimental evidence for long-wavelength helimagnetic order at room temperature and magnetic properties similar to the bulk material. We obtain α intr = 0.0036 ± 0.0003 at 310 K for the intrinsic damping parameter. We probe the dynamics of the system by means of muon-spin rotation, indicating that the ground state is reached via a freezing out of slow dynamics. Our work paves the way towards the fabrication of thin films of chiral magnets that host certain spin whirls, so-called skyrmions, at room temperature and potentially offer integrability into modern electronics.
Keyphrases
  • room temperature
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  • magnetic resonance imaging
  • quantum dots
  • mass spectrometry
  • magnetic resonance
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  • fluorescent probe