Topological and interfacial phenomena in oxide heterostructures

Oxide materials show a plethora of electronic and magnetic phases from strong electron-electron interactions, in particular, the presence of magnetic skyrmions in oxide heterostructures. In this talk, I will present recent data on topological and interfacial phenomena in oxide heterostructures SrRuO3/SrIrO3, where the SrRuO3 film is ferromagnetic while the SrIrO3 provides a large interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI). The interfacial DMI is a key proponent in stabilizing topological spin textures such as skyrmions. Our samples were grown be dc sputtering on SrTiO3 (100) substrates. The films were characterized with AFM and XRD to confirm excellent crystalline quality in conjunction with atomic scale roughness. Hall measurements show features not seen after accounting for the ordinary and anomalous Hall contributions. Specifically, we observed a pronounced topological Hall signal at temperatures below 60 K and at high magnetic fields of 1-3 T. Additionally, SQUID magnetometry measurements reveal a magnetic feature near zero field not captured by the resistivity measurements, indicating this magnetic phase to be insulating in nature. We conclude by showing recent measurements that demonstrate the tunability of these topological properties.