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Discovery of strong bulk Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in composition-uniform centrosymmetric magnetic single layers

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Abstract

Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) is the key ingredient of chiral spintronic phenomena and the emerging technologies based on such phenomena. A nonzero DMI usually occurs at magnetic interfaces or within non-centrosymmetric single crystals. Here, we report the observation of a strong unexpected DMI within a centrosymmetric polycrystalline ferromagnet that has neither a crystal inversion symmetry breaking nor a composition gradient. This DMI is a bulk effect, increases with the thickness of the magnetic layer, and is insensitive to the symmetry of the interfaces or the neighboring materials. We observe a total DMI strength that is a factor of > 2 greater than the highest interfacial DMI in the literature. This DMI most likely arises from the strong spin-orbit coupling, strong orbital hybrization, and a “hidden” long-range asymmetry in the material. Our discovery of the strong unconventional bulk DMI in centrosymmetric, composition-uniform magnetic single layers provides fundamental building blocks for the emerging field of spintronics and will stimulate the exploitation of unconventional spin-orbit phenomena in a wide range of materials.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Superlattices and Microstructures, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100083, China

    Lijun Zhu

  2. College of Materials Science and Opto-Electronic Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Lijun Zhu

  3. Department of Physics, Center for Complex Quantum Systems, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, 78712, USA

    David Lujan & Xiaoqin Li

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  1. Lijun Zhu
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  2. David Lujan
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  3. Xiaoqin Li
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Correspondence to Lijun Zhu.

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Conflict of interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2022YFA1204004), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 12274405), and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB44000000). The DMI measurement performed at UT-Austin was primarily supported by the Center for Dynamics and Control of Materials: an NSF MRSEC under Cooperative Agreement No. DMR1720595. The authors acknowledge Xiyue Zhang and David Muller for help with the sample characterizations.

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Zhu, L., Lujan, D. & Li, X. Discovery of strong bulk Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in composition-uniform centrosymmetric magnetic single layers. Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. 67, 227511 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-023-2232-2

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