Stabilization and control of weakly correlated polar skyrmions in ferroelectric thin films

Abstract

In recent years, polar topological textures like skyrmions and vortices in ferroelectric superlattices and multilayers have received extensive attention. However, the polar topological textures in these systems suffer strong interactions and are difficult to be manipulated as individual elements, limiting their application prospects in storage and logic devices. Here, via phase field simulations, we demonstrate domain engineering as a feasible strategy to create diverse weakly correlated polar topological texture arrays in single-layer tetragonal ferroelectric thin films, including Néel-type skyrmions with positive/negative topological charges and Bloch-type skyrmions with different chirality. We calculate the stability phase diagram and reveal the evolution characteristics of these polar topological textures under local electric and mechanical stimuli. We realize local erasing and writing of single Néel- and Bloch-type skyrmions, as well as deterministic chirality control of single Bloch-type skyrmion, confirming the weak correlation of the polar skyrmions. Our study therefore demonstrates domain engineering as an effective strategy for stabilizing weakly correlated polar topological textures, which extends the existence system of polar topological textures and paves a new way for the design of storage and logic devices based on polar topological textures.