Tailored Flux Pinning in Superconductor-Ferromagnet Multilayers with Engineered Magnetic Domain Morphology From Stripes to Skyrmions

X. Palermo , N. Reyren (1) , S. Mesoraca , A. V Samokhvalov (2) , S. Collin , F. Godel (1) , A. Sander , K. Bouzehouane (1) , J. Santamaria (3) , V. Cros (1) , A. Buzdin , J. Villegas

1 Laboratoire Albert Fert (ex-UMPhy Unité mixte de physique CNRS/Thales)
2 Institute for Physics of Microstructures of the RAS
3 Instituto Universitario de Investigacion de Nanocienca de Aragon

Superconductor/Ferromagnet (S/F) hybrid systems show interesting magneto-transport behaviors that result from the transfer of properties between both constituents. For instance, magnetic memory can be transferred from the F into the S through the pinning of superconducting vortices by the ferromagnetic textures. The ability to tailor this type of induced behavior is important to broaden its range of application. Here we show that engineering the F magnetization reversal allows tuning the strength of the vortex pinning (and memory) effects, as well as the field range in which they appear. This is done by using magnetic multilayers in which Co thin films are combined with different heavy metals (Ru, Ir, Pt). By choosing the materials, thicknesses, and stacking order of the layers, we can design the characteristic domain size and morphology, from out-of-plane magnetized stripe domains to much smaller magnetic skyrmions. These changes strongly affect the magneto-transport properties. The underlying mechanisms are identified by comparing the experimental results to a magnetic pinning model. * [e-mail] 2

Domaines: Matière Condensée [cond-mat]; Supraconductivité [cond-mat.supr-con]

X. Palermo, N. Reyren, S. Mesoraca, A. V Samokhvalov, S. Collin, et al.. Tailored Flux Pinning in Superconductor-Ferromagnet Multilayers with Engineered Magnetic Domain Morphology From Stripes to Skyrmions. Physical Review Applied, 2020, 13 (1), ⟨10.1103/PhysRevApplied.13.014043⟩. ⟨hal-02455006⟩