Generating and Manipulating Hybrid Skyrmions in Thin DMI Magnetic Films

Skyrmions are promising candidates for stable and highly mobile spin textures in novel magnetic storage applications. Originally found only in exotic materials, at low temperatures, recently RT skyrmions have been confirmed in thin film magnetic materials. However, controlling the actual location of the skyrmion nucleation in such a film has so far been elusive. Hybrid skyrmions that can be generated by the spin transfer torque of a current pulse sent through a nanomagnetic disk in a vortex state coupled to a magnetic film with DMI, could solve this problem. Using four step nanolithography, and three different types of thin film deposition we report first results on hybrid skyrmions generated in Ir/Co/Pt multilayers with large DMI connected to 30nm thin Permalloy (Py) disks with diameters from 250-1000nm. Characterization of hybrid skyrmions using element-specific magnetic soft x-ray microscopy allows us to image the magnetic structure of the Py nanomagnets and the DMI film independently. We found that hybrid skyrmions exist over a larger range of applied magnetic fields and nucleate at the location of the Py disks. Future studies will focus on the dynamics of hybrid skyrmions by running current pulses through the DMI film.