Symposium EM9-Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions

Magnetic skyrmions are topologically nontrivial, swirling spin configurations that arise due to Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interactions in noncentrosymmetric materials with a helical magnetic ground state, such as B20 metal silicides and germanides. Their existence was a long-standing prediction until first observations were made in 2009 on helimagnetic films. Since this breakthrough, the experimental and theoretical study of skyrmions has emerged as a major focus of magnetism research. This strong interest is motivated largely by several favorable properties that make skyrmions attractive as carriers of information in high density magnetic storage media. These properties include their stability, nanometer-scale size, and the ultra-low electrical current density required to move them compared with conventional magnetic domain walls. Until now, however, skyrmions have not been observed at room-temperature or at magnetic fields low enough for practical applications. Further research into new and engineered materials, specifically conceived to host skyrmions under practical conditions, is required.

The goal of the proposed symposium is to promote and encourage exactly this kind of work in a timely fashion. We will bring together an interdisciplinary group of researchers in materials science, physics, and device engineering who are interested in this emerging field and work on both the materials engineering aspects and the fundamental physics of magnetic skyrmions. The choice of possible magnetic materials is restricted by the fact that stable skyrmion phases require the DM interaction and non-centrosymmetric crystal symmetries. For this reason, most experiments have focused on materials such as MnSi, Fe_1-xCo_xSi, FeGe, or MnGe with B20 structure. New materials could be discovered. It should also be possible, however, to engineer materials and nanostructures that take use surface-induced chiral exchange or other interactions to stabilize skyrmion phases beyond the low-temperature and high-field regime. The symposium will therefore cover a wide variety of skyrmion host-materials, in bulk, thin-film, and nanostructured form that are grown using MBE and CVD, or fabricated using a top-down approach. Measurement techniques such as Lorentz transmission electron microscopy (LTEM), topological Hall effect (THE) and other transport measurements, and SQUID magnetometry will be included, as well as more recently developed techniques. Theoretical calculations and potential architectures for future applications will also be considered.

• New materials that host magnetic skyrmions
• Skyrmions in confined geometries
• Skyrmion dynamics and control
• New probing techniques and methods
• Rational design and growth of materials and nanostructures for stabilized skyrmion phase
• Conceptual device designs to detect, manipulate and control skyrmions
• Theoretical and numerical approaches for designing materials/structures and understanding behaviors

• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_0 (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_1 (Johns Hopkins University, USA)
• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_2 (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_3 (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China)
• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_4 (CNRS Thales, France)
• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_5 (Argonne National Laboratory, USA)
• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_6 (Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary)
• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_7 (University of California, Riverside, USA)
• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_8 (IFW Dresden, Germany)
• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_9 (Leeds University, United Kingdom)
• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_10 (TU Munich, Germany)
• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_11 (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_12 (Ohio State University, USA)
• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_13 (IFW Dresden, Germany)
• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_14 (University of Cologne, Germany)
• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_15 (University of Tokyo / RIKEN, Japan)
• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_16 (Emory University, USA)
• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_17 (University of Hamburg, Germany)
• EM9_Materials and Nanostructures for Magnetic Skyrmions_18 (University of New Hampshire, USA)