Strain-mediated electric manipulation of magnetic skyrmion and other topological states in geometric confined nanodiscs

Abstract

Magnetic skyrmions in multilayer stack structures are promising magnetic memory bits for applications in race-track storage devices or random-access memories. For practical implementation in energy efficient memory devices, it is essential to achieve a deterministic switch of skyrmion states, e.g. nucleation and elimination, triggered by electric fields. In this work, by means of micromagnetic simulation, we demonstrate the strain-mediated electric field driven switching of magnetic skyrmion and other topological states without the presence of a magnetic field in a proposed device consisting of nanodiscs of trilayer Pt/Co/Ta stacks on a piezoelectric substrate. It is revealed that the multiple magnetic state switching behaviors, including the nucleation and elimination of skyrmion or labyrinth stripe domain states, as well as topological transitions between skyrmion, vortex, skyrmionium and vertical single domain states, can be triggered by applying an external electric field mediated by strains. The corresponding critical strains and their dependence on the geometric parameters of the nanodiscs (e.g. size and number of stacks) for triggering such magnetic switching are also explored. The stability of these topological domain states and possible switching behaviors (e.g. volatile and non-volatile) between the different states are discussed as well. The capability for controlled switching of these topological states provides a new pathway to energy efficient high-density magnetoelectric memory and logic devices.