Controllable skyrmion chirality in ferroelectrics

Yu Tikhonov,O Heinonen,S Kondovych,M Pavlenko,V M Vinokur,A Razumnaya,L Baudry,J Mangeri,I Luk’Yanchuk,A Galda,S Nakhmanson,A Sené

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-65291-8

Abstract

Chirality, an intrinsic handedness, is one of the most intriguing fundamental phenomena in nature. Materials composed of chiral molecules find broad applications in areas ranging from nonlinear optics and spintronics to biology and pharmaceuticals. However, chirality is usually an invariable inherent property of a given material that cannot be easily changed at will. Here, we demonstrate that ferroelectric nanodots support skyrmions the chirality of which can be controlled and switched. We devise protocols for realizing control and efficient manipulations of the different types of skyrmions. Our findings open the route for controlled chirality with potential applications in ferroelectric-based information technologies.

Highlights

Chirality, an intrinsic handedness, is one of the most intriguing fundamental phenomena in nature
A fundamental asymmetry property describing systems that are distinguishable from their mirror images, remains in the focus of modern science[1,2,3,4], and chiral materials find diverse applications[5,6,7,8]
A pre-defined chiral symmetry is absent in ferroelectric materials, they were recently found to host a wealth of chiral topological excitations, including Bloch domain walls[16,17,18,19], coreless vortices with a skyrmion structure[20,21,22], single skyrmions[23,24], skyrmion lattices[25], and Hopfions[26]

Summary

Introduction

An intrinsic handedness, is one of the most intriguing fundamental phenomena in nature. The precise distribution of the chiralities in the Bloch domain walls in the initial state depends on which random paraelectric configuration was quenched, but does not affect the polarization evolution after the initial poling in a large electric field.

Results

Conclusion