“Tailoring magnetic spin textures in nanostructured complex oxides”
The development of spintronic devices based on ferromagnetic (FM) and antiferromagnetic (AF) materials requires the ability to design spin textures such as artificial magnetic skyrmions, which are characterized by adjacent FM regions of a thin film with both in-plane and out-of-plane moments. In particular, AF spin textures have received significant interest in recent years due to their promising characteristics including fast operating speeds, nanoscalability, and stability against magnetic stray fields. Challenges remain in terms of the control and detection of AF spin textures, particularly in nanoscale geometries needed for device implementation. Due to their strong interactions between charge, spin, lattice, and orbital degrees of freedom, complex oxides such as FM La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 (LSMO) and AF La1-xSrxFeO3 (LSFO) provide an ideal platform for the design of magnetic spin textures. In this talk, I will discuss the ability to tailor FM and AF spin textures in LSMO and LSFO thin films and heterostructures using a patterning process based on ion implantation to create magnetic islands embedded within a non-magnetic matrix. A complex 3D strain state develops within the magnetic islands from the strain imposed by the underlying substrate and the surrounding amorphous matrix. X-ray photoemission electron microscopy imaging of the FM and AF spin textures demonstrates that an intricate interplay exists between shape and magnetocrystalline anisotropy energies as well as exchange interactions with an adjacent FM LSMO layer. Together these studies demonstrate that complex oxide heterostructures provide a unique platform for engineering spin textures for spintronics applications.
