Room-temperature helimagnetism in FeGe thin films

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 7; no. 1; p. 123
• Main Authors: Zhang, S L, Stasinopoulos, I, Lancaster, T, Xiao, F, Bauer, A, Rucker, F, Baker, A A, Figueroa, A I, Salman, Z, Pratt, F L, Blundell, S J, Prokscha, T, Suter, A, Waizner, J, Garst, M, Grundler, D, van der Laan, G, Pfleiderer, C, Hesjedal, T
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Nature Publishing Group UK 09.03.2017; Nature Portfolio
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-00201-z

Chiral magnets are promising materials for the realisation of high-density and low-power spintronic memory devices. For these future applications, a key requirement is the synthesis of appropriate materials in the form of thin films ordering well above room temperature. Driven by the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, the cubic compound FeGe exhibits helimagnetism with a relatively high transition temperature of 278 K in bulk crystals. We demonstrate that this temperature can be enhanced significantly in thin films. Using x-ray scattering and ferromagnetic resonance techniques, we provide unambiguous experimental evidence for long-wavelength helimagnetic order at room temperature and magnetic properties similar to the bulk material. We obtain α  = 0.0036 ± 0.0003 at 310 K for the intrinsic damping parameter. We probe the dynamics of the system by means of muon-spin rotation, indicating that the ground state is reached via a freezing out of slow dynamics. Our work paves the way towards the fabrication of thin films of chiral magnets that host certain spin whirls, so-called skyrmions, at room temperature and potentially offer integrability into modern electronics.